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Floating cities have long seemed like a utopian pipedream based on
little more than fantasy. But this week the concept appeared to take a
step closer to reality through a UN-backed partnership.
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UN-Habitat, which works on sustainable urban development, will team up
with private firm Oceanix, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) and The Explorers Club, a professional society that promotes
scientific exploration around the world, to further the idea.
As climate change advances at an alarming rate and huge numbers of
people cram into city slums, "floating cities is one of the possible
solutions", UN-Habitat's executive director, Maimunah Mohd Sharif, says.
How would it work?
Oceanix City, or the world's first sustainable floating city, would
essentially be groups of hexagonal platforms - anchored to the seabed -
that could each house around 300 people, effectively creating a
community for 10,000 residents.
Cages under the city could harvest scallops, kelp, or other forms of
seafood.
Marc Collins Chen, the chief executive of Oceanix, said the technology
to build large floating infrastructure or housing already exists.
"The biggest question in people's minds is if these cities can actually
float," Mr Collins Chen told the BBC.
"There are thousands of such houses in the Netherlands and other
communities around the world. It is now a question of scale and creating
integrated systems and communities."
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Concerns have been raised that floating cities could be perceived as a
quick fix to dealing with the dangers of climate change and rising sea
levels.
"The caution I have is that sometimes people advance futuristic ideas of
this sort as a way of saying climate change isn't so bad because if it
happens we'll find a way around it," Michael Gerrard, director of the
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told the
Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2017.
But Mr Collins Chen said Oceanix was working with a "solid team" of
experts in waste management, water engineering, marine regeneration and
energy efficiency.
The cities could also be a defence against natural disasters, he said.
"Floating cities will be located specifically in sites where they will
have sufficient water depth to not be impacted by tsunamis," he said,
adding that the platforms could also withstand floods and hurricanes.
Are the plans realistic?
"The main obstacles at this point are psychological and are not
technological," Richard Wiese, president of The Explorers Club, told the
BBC.
"People psychologically get nervous at the term 'floating city'. I used
this term to my wife, and her immediate response was not technological
but rather visceral, she didn't like the idea of something that could
drift away."
To gain the confidence of the general masses and politicians, Mr Wiese
said the creation of small extensions to existing cities could be
necessary to start with, picking out Hong Kong, New York or Boston as
potential testing grounds.
Beyond housing solutions, Mr Wiese said floating hospitals being towed
to disaster areas was another idea being floated.
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One of the obvious issues facing Oceanix City is that it lacks funding.
"[Those] that fund infrastructure tend to be very conservative," said
Steve Lewis, founder of Living PlanIT, a group that focuses on new
approaches to urban planning and development.
"They tend to invest in things they understand well and then you come
along and say you're building a town floating on the ocean and they go
'really?'"
However Mr Lewis, who now focuses on investing in smart cities, pointed
to the boom in wind farms over the past 20 years as evidence that
attitudes can change.
Although a floating settlement on such a scale would be unprecedented
and would throw up plenty of technical challenges, Mr Lewis said the
structures would actually be relatively straightforward to put together.
"Proof is in the pudding and we'll see how it actually turns out," he
said.
"But I think we need to push the boundaries of what new life looks like
in different environments. Even if it doesn't house 10,000 people, I
think communities of a few thousand would benefit."
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Mr Wiese of The Explorers Club said that selling the idea to investors
and the public need not be a "doomsday bunker scenario".
"We need to demonstrate that it is an enjoyable, sustainable and
economic advancement that will apply to all portions of the population
and not just wealthy enclaves," he said.
"If you look at Apollo 11, you have to remember that there were many
small steps to create a moon launch," he added.
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