Now, with waterside cities from New York to Lagos and Jakarta pressed to find more living space while the oceans are eating away at what’s already there, the idea of floating cities on the seas has begun to take on an edge of desperate necessity. Up to now, their proposals have largely been curiosities or technology demonstrations, pushing the limits of what was possible. There, Oceanix introduced architectural illustrations of a bright and shiny world of green soft-edged isles arranged in hexagons, hosting dazzling structures topped with glittering solar panels, lush gardens, a diverse and healthy population, all spread over 185 acres in the middle of the ocean.įor decades, engineers have looked at the idea of relocating giant pieces of infrastructure to buoyant buildings, or very large floating structures. In April 2019, the United Nations held a “High Level Round Table” on sustainable floating cities. And the concept is starting to get serious attention. But where the price of real estate is high enough-or the alternatives are national exodus-adventurous new ideas look comparatively less extravagant. Photo: WikepediaCities on the water may sound pie in the sky, to say nothing of expensive. The Evergreen Point Floating Bridge is supported by hollow concrete boxes. “Most of those cities are coastal and they are growing faster than they can grow infrastructure.”
“In Asia three million people a week are migrating to cities,” Chen said. In Oceanix’s vision, floating communities would produce their own electricity, produce their own food, and produce zero waste. Chen had one: “To have entire floating cities.”Ĭhen took that vision and founded a company called Oceanix to work out the logistics of permanent life at sea. Island nations, Chen realized, had nowhere to turn and needed another option. For some, like Miami or Bangladesh, retreat is at least possible. That’s the choice a lot of low-lying places are facing in the coming century. The other was to build large engineering public works, like dikes and seawalls.” “When we looked at it, the options were pretty bad,” said Marc Collins Chen, who in the 2000s was the minister of tourism. (Perhaps you’ve heard of Tahiti.) And yet, thanks to erosion, land subsidence, and sea level rise, parts of this paradise are threatened with sinking beneath the waves. It’s a collection of 118 tropical islands and atolls spread across a wide expanse of the Pacific. By some accounts, French Polynesia is heaven on Earth.