After yet another round of heavy rain and flooding in Taiwan, former Kaohsiung City Councillor Chu Ting-yu criticised the well-worn routine of inspecting disaster sites and calling for more pumps as ineffective, arguing instead for a flood-control approach pitched at the national land-use level — bad news for local politicians, but a sound direction for long-term disaster prevention.

• Every downpour brings site inspections, budget lobbying, more pumps and more detention ponds, and then the matter fades away.
• Extreme rainfall routinely exceeding 100 millimetres has already surpassed the limits of traditional hard engineering built to hold water back.
• Water does not respect administrative boundaries, and piecemeal projects carried out separately by each city and county cannot cope; centrally led, whole-basin governance is needed.
• Cities must shift from relying on drainage alone to absorbing water across the entire urban area, and public facilities and large-scale developments should be legally required to include water-retention capacity.
• Electrical substation equipment should be moved out of basements, flood-protection standards for hospitals and transport hubs should be raised, and buildings in low-lying areas should be set back and elevated.

Outlook: If central and local governments remain unwilling to amend regulations and change spatial structures and governance thinking, the next heavy rain will simply repeat the same cycle of flooding and blame.