Group plans floating cities by 2020

When people in the counter-culture movement of the ‘70s got fed up with society, they started communes. In the ‘90s it was all about eco villages. And now a group of people who want to shape their own society are planning floating cities.

The Seasteading Institute describe themselves as a ”diverse global team of marine biologists, nautical engineers, aquaculture farmers, maritime attorneys, medical researchers, security personnel, investors, environmentalists and artists” who want to create floating platforms which will eventually have their own status as legally distinct nations. There they will be free to engineer society from the ground – or rather surface – up, allowing them to become “sustainable energy powerhouses” where entrepreneurial freedom will be maximised.

While the project sounds like pie-in-the-sea thinking, the Seasteaders have already made considerable progress towards their goals. They have published a feasibility study, and successfully crowd-funded the creation of a design with Dutch aquatic design firm DeltaSync. The current favoured design for their first city involves 50m modular platforms shaped as either squares or pentagons and made from concrete, with a hollow core to make them float. Bolted together these could be assembled, Lego style, into whatever configuration was required – and even disassembled and towed to another location if storms or conflict threatened.

The next phase of the project involves sounding out a suitable host nation that would allow a city to be anchored offshore, and to sound out potential first tenants such as hotels, aqua-farmers, and researchers.

Read more about the Seasteading Institute at www.seasteading.org.