Floating cities: the future or a washed-up idea?

[Judi Lynn]

Floating cities: the future or a washed-up idea?
Brydon T. Wang
Wednesday, June 12, 2019 - 12:12am



OCEANIX/BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group

Oceanix, a proposed floating city, has captured the attention of the United Nations.

Humans have a long history of living on water. Our water homes span the fishing villages in Southeast Asia, Peru and Bolivia to modern floating homes in Vancouver and Amsterdam. As our cities grapple with overcrowding and undesirable living situations, the ocean remains a potential frontier for sophisticated water-based communities.

The United Nations has expressed support for further research into floating cities in response to rising sea levels and to house climate refugees. A speculative proposal, Oceanix City, was unveiled in April at the first Round Table on Sustainable Floating Cities at U.N. headquarters in New York.



Life on a floating city, Oceanix.

The former tourism minister of French Polynesia, Marc Collins Chen, and architecture studio BIG advanced the proposal. Chen is involved with the Seasteading Institute, which is seeking to develop autonomous city-states floating in the shallow waters of "host nations."

While this latest proposal has gained U.N. attention, it is an old idea we have repeatedly returned to over the past 70 years with little success. In fact, the Oceanix City proposal has not reached the same level of technical sophistication as previous models.

More:
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/floating-cities-future-or-washed-idea

[mr_lebowski]

1. I cannot think of a single advantage to be gained by building at sea as opposed to land ...

People in overcrowded areas like Macao or Hong Kong, who live on their fishing boats, cause that's all they can afford, and their livelihood is found at sea ... that's one thing.

This sounds very different from that. And doesn't seem like a good idea, esp. as a response to climate change, which is going to mean much more violent storms in the future.