Most settlement layouts are generated from movement geometry and then have drainage imposed on them. The result is infrastructure that fights the terrain and fails at the extremes.
Inverting the order — establishing the attenuation and recharge system first, then fitting the block grid to it — produces a structure that costs less, floods less, and yields a continuous public open space network as a by-product.
Attenuation as public space
A detention basin is a single-purpose engineering object. A shallow, planted attenuation corridor with a path along it is a park that also detains water. The cost difference is small; the civic difference is total.
The constraint that structures
In water-scarce regions, hydrology is the constraint that cannot be negotiated with. Planning frameworks that treat it as the primary structuring device tend to be more resilient to every other change — political, economic, demographic.