Full-blown cities, floating in the ocean waters like ducks in a bathtub. Does it sound like science fiction? It is, at present. But plans for developing floating cities, along with the technology that enables them to work, already exist.
And there are already avant-gardes of the future inhabitants of floating cities. A couple of supporters of the cause built a house off the Thai coast: Chad Elwartowski and his wife, the Thai native Nadia Summergirl, are the first "pioneers" cited by Seasteading Institute, an institution whose goal is to build politically autonomous cities on the sea.
After this first, troubled experiment, the direction seems to be to build entire, small neighborhoods sitting on 3D printed artificial coral reefs. Another thing that seemed like science fiction until yesterday, and today it is in progress. Elwartowski himself is working on the project and in March he published a video describing plans to continue at full speed despite the pandemic.
From neighborhoods to floating cities
Brydon Wang, a technology and construction lawyer and researcher at the Queensland University of Technology, explains that floating cities could allow buildings to be "mobile and 'reprogrammable'". They would also be added values in emergency management. The first to come to mind are that of Covid (although the floating quarantine facilities were a disaster) or fires in Australia. In emergency situations, accessibility can be the difference between life and death for the most vulnerable members of society who lack the mobility to escape without assistance. Emergency floating structures can be designed to have easier accessibility, closer to the water surface, and facilities needed to support displaced communities for long periods of time, perhaps even full-time.
The UN is thinking of overcoming the historical limits of traditional cities
Last year, under UN-Habitat, its human settlements programme, the UN announced an initiative to investigate floating cities as a sustainable solution to the growing problem of urban density, scarcity of the earth and climate change.
During a high-level roundtable on the topic, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed he explained that the way we have built cities in the past, citing New York and Nairobi as examples, is not sustainable for the future.
The cause is their impact on the climate and rising sea levels. Floating cities could help communities in places like Bangkok, where the risk of flooding threatens to destroy "static" settlements. Mohammed cited other examples including Lagos, Nigeria, where “one of the answers to landlessness and a growing population is a series of floating villages on the outskirts of the city.” He also mentioned Singapore, where land shortages have led to massive, costly and environmentally damaging land reclamation. Rather than fighting to reclaim land from the water, he says, directly building floating cities would make them more adaptable to change.
Floating cities: virtuous examples
Furthermore, there are precedents for successful floating development. Cities like Seattle, Jakarta and Mexico City have provided space for houseboats and floating markets for some time, expanding the places where people can live and work on the sea. In Victoria, British Columbia, there is a whole floating market called Fisherman's Wharf. Shops, restaurants, boats and colorful houseboats are all connected by a grid of piers along the harbor. Solution valid for both residents and tourists.
Energy autonomy: Existing floating developments currently run on the same energy sources as the mainland. However, the latest and most futuristic floating city models run autonomously on green energy with net zero emissions and actually support marine environments rather than disturbing them. “When entire floating communities are designed from the ground up, they can be designed as climate neutral. Why not use the abundant wind and water to cover all their electrical needs? ” says Amina Mohammed.
The prototype in Thailand that I mentioned at the beginning of the post runs on solar energy supplied by panels on the roof. Many of these floating city concepts include solutions like hydroponic grow walls to grow food and ways to convert algae into energy, or rain into usable water. More advanced concepts such as Oceanix , designed by the BIG architecture firm, or Aequorea , a futuristic “oceanscraper” by Vincent Callebaut, they also boast fully developed underwater marine habitats that thrive right beneath the water's surface. Will they go the way of flying cars and Marty McFly's hoverboard or will they find an outlet?
Who knows
Innovators, researchers and private sector leaders can develop the technologies that enable floating buildings, neighborhoods or cities to be built in a sustainable, resilient and livable way. Governments can provide incentives for innovation to thrive. And local authorities can facilitate the construction of pilot projects. It's not me who says it, but always Amina Mohammed.
Just like the planning of any city, floating cities will rely on technology to establish an infrastructure that supports the needs of the population. Floating cities are not libertarian utopias of the future. They can be more sustainable extensions of existing cities: an ecological alternative to destructive land clearing or deforestation, a solution to land scarcity that doesn't require real land.
