Ambitious plans for building a city in the middle of the sea with houses, offices and restaurants are starting to be realized.
The idea of building self-sustaining, autonomous cities in international waters is a step closer to realization.
A pilot project that began in France in Polynesia will be the first “floating community” and is planned to be completed by 2020. This city will be able to accommodate 300 people.
Joe Quirk, president of the Seasteading Institute, spoke in a recent interview about his plans for cities in the ocean that would be free from restrictions on world governments.
Floating City
“If you could have a floating city, it would essentially be a start-up country,” Mr Quirk told the New York Times, explaining his disillusionment with current governments that “just don’t get better”, and are stuck in the past.
He said he saw seasteading as a way to escape this system.
“We can create a huge diversity of governments for a huge diversity of people,” he said.
For now they are ready to cooperate with existing governments in order to create a “semi-autonomous floating Venice in paradise”.
This floating city will be located in a “special economic zone”, enabling the institute to implement some of its ideas in a relatively controlled area.
Floating City
Engineers and architects visited the site where will start the project which cost $167 million.
The team has made an agreement with the state to create a “single management system” in the “batch” of the ocean on which the project will begin.
“By 2050, I want to see floating cities, thousands of them, I hope,” Quirk says.
Floating City
