The REAL Problem with Floating Cities 

As a sailor, I'm pretty sure that none of the people that propose building floating cities have ever been out at sea during a major storm

The two closest things we have today to a floating city is oil rigs and cruise ships. These are large vessels designed for the open sea, and guess what? They look nothing like these city proposals. The dream of a self sufficient oceanic community is severely hampered by the fact that the ocean is a harsh place, and these high-tech looking city concepts would get washed away in any storm.

Your opening was nuts. I loved it. As a person from a family of ship builders, I can say the sea city concept is very challenging. The hull that floats must be very strong and capable of surviving acidic, weather, and bio -based decay. It is going to be expensive. Now I will provide my totally nuts alternative and explain why I believe it is actually quite viable: an Antarctica City. In a nutshell, my reasoning is based on the extreme energy production potential of all-year super strong winds, ice as a building material, and the mineral-rich land. Remember the category 5 hurricane that last swept over Peurto Ricoh? Notice that in those images where all trees had their leaves removed and all power lines were down but those wind turbines still stood firm. We know how to build them even stronger and we know how to make them adjust for massive and sudden variations in wind strength. Antarctica has hurricane force winds all winter and very strong winds also in the rest of the year. This is not a downside--it's a huge advantage in that energy production is key to all kinds of industries. Further, ice as a building material offers a lot of potential. People may not realize this but it is a very efficient insulator. The cold outside makes it possible to keep it warm inside, including a nice room temperature. Further, ice can be transparent allowing in sunlight that plants like and keeping out harmful UV rays. I would run hot water tubes through the soil to keep vegetation going and to warm the air, as well. Imagine domed or tubular gardens. Further, the mineral wealth should provide for a metallurgic industry. The cold and winds outside also help with this, such as for tempering metals and blowing away waste gases. These metals can also be used to reenforce the city. Trade is the hardest part. The city must be build on land--not on a moving glacier. And you'd probably want a cable car system to move good to and from a docks that will only be useable during the southern summer months.

One technology you ought to look into is ocean thermal energy conversion, or OTEC. It pulls up cold water from the deeps to the warmer surface, essentially creating a low-temperature steam engine. But the real benefit are the byproducts. In particular, it creates an artificial upwelling zone that enables local food production. For optimal efficiency, OTEC cities would be within 5 degrees of the Equator. Not only is this a meteorologically safe region (called "the Doldrums" for a reason), but it's also a biological desert so there'll be no environmental damage. This isn't without its challenges, of course. An OTEC city is projected to take 7 years to grow and cost ~12 billion in setup costs. The economic infrastructure also merits with more planning. The proposed exports would be carotenoids, magnesium, algin fabric ("sea silk"), pearls, fish, and liquid hydrogen. However, informal research on my part revealed that one OTEC city could saturate the global carotenoid market, lowering prices and thus profits since this product would be a majority of the manufacturing sector's income. And of course, there's the question of who gets to live there. This information is pulled from the book _The Millennial Project,_ though a better place to research current developments is the Living Universe Foundation's web site (under Aquarius). I hope you'll look into it and incorporate your findings into a follow-up video. I'm glad to see a critique of current projects that isn't a hit piece on the concept as a whole.

as someone whos worked as a sailor, the absurd amount of maintinance on a weekly basis is very high, saltwater eats just about everything, and even with continius maintinance you still have to put ships into drydock for major overhauls. even if this could be built, i have a hard time seeing it as economically viable, especially for "normal" living

I'm not a naval engineer, but that turtle looks like it has an absurd amount of drag.

You proposed the question "will the lagoon still protect the city if the sea level rises above it?". The short answer is yes, although to less of a degree. It still prevents major swells and hinders tsunami, though to a much less degree with the tsunami. There are other factors as well but the main point is that the sea level under and around it is much more shallow than a normal sea floor off a coast.

These cities as solutions to problems remind me of cold fusion as an energy solution. Also, as someone who served with the USN on a large ship during a hurricane, these people have no idea what being in an ocean full of 5 story waves is like.

These billionaires and autocratic governments WISH they have what Renaissance Venice had. -B

Having lived on a small island for most of my life, the idea of floating cities honestly scares the shit out of me. You would have to have an extremely unique combination of compatible personalities for the whole thing to work.

The joke about boats is that they're a hole in the water into which you toss vast sums of money

Part of the problem is that these cities don’t really take manufacturing and logistics into account. How do you get goods from point A to point B to point C to point D to that fancy restaurant you want to eat at. This is something I’ve seen with all these “futuristic cities” that have been designed. I guess some of it comes from that same fallacy that “food comes from the grocery store, duh”. The products we use and food we eat goes through quite a lot before we get it and if you want something to be self sustaining while keeping the same quality of life you had before, there’s a lot that needs to happen.

This whole concept of the floating city, and Dami's suggestion of building these aquatic neighborhoods near urban centers on dry land, reminded me of a era in the history of my hometown of San Francisco. During the gold rush, so many people sailed into San Francisco bay that the harbor was filled with ships. The frenzy for gold was so great that often the crews would abandon the ships to strike it rich with the passengers they transported. The enterprising citizens of the city, now teaming with new people and lacking the resources to accommodate this rapidly growing population decided to use the empty ships as new sites for saloons, hotels and other establishments. Piers were built, extending the existing street grid to reach the floating business, and overtime the shallow waters of the bay were filled in, eventually turning what once was water into land. Evidence of this floating neighborhood can be found in the street names downtown, where First street, the street that followed the original shoreline, is now several blocks inland. The hulls of the century old boats can still be found buried under the surface of the urban landscape where big construction projects in the area have uncovered the remains of dozens of these ships.

In the Netherlands we might not have fully floating cities, but we do have a bunch of floating homes. And I don't mean house boats, which are quite common in the Netherlands, but full on homes floating on the water, more like floating neighborhoods than full cities. I think the fact most floating cities are imagined as single megastructures is the main problem with those ideas. I think we need to look at how can we build floating neighborhoods, not to live in the ocean, but to allow the ground under the neighborhoods to flood therefore reducing the strain on damns and river embankments.

Floating city in an existing protected bay or harbor, probably attached to mainland city or support infrastructure, doable. Mid-ocean floating city able to withstand sea swells running up to about 60ft (18.2m), rouge waves, hurricane/cyclones/winter storms/tsunamis? With the designs in this video, not going to happen. Every one would be broken up by the repeated wave and wind action. There's a reason the floating oil rigs are round sticks, gives them high structural durability while allowing swells to buffet from any direction without affecting the force on the structure. Ship are different still. They can handle seas because they are constantly moving (when not in port), a ship with no power will sink amazingly quickly as soon as it's no longer taking waves in the direction it is designed to take them. Sure, build pretty floating Lilypad's in the harbors and bays. But before you try to tackle open ocean cities ride a container ship or tanker back and fourth across the ocean in storm season a few times. Just to get an idea for the punishment the sea can dish out.

As an Economist, who's spent 5 years on the ocean, the whole concept is absurd.

The maintenance costs hurt my head, in addition to everything else you said. It's bad enough maintaining a house on dry land, and the ocean ravages materials with salt water / galvanic corrosion and storm / wave damage. The idea that these places could somehow be tax free is hilarious, you would just call the taxes "strata fees" or something and they would be astronomical.

That turtle city hurt my head , there is an exceptionally good reason why boats are the shape they are , given the distribution of weight over the surface area even a small wave would put a tremendous amount of stress on the structure snapping it into pieces, even living in those houses will be torture if you don't nail everything in place. And if you are thinking stationary city the foundation has be be elevated same as an oil rig to minimize the effect the sea will have on the structure as a whole. I don't know billionaires have lost their minds , instead of pumping so much money into creating a habitat they will most likely get tossed out off by the very people who built it if the apocalypse happen , maybe preserve the one we all have and share ?

In a sence theirs on kind of floating city that works. There’s a converted cruse liner called Residensea or now “MS The World”, that a floating globe circling condominium. Some live on it full time, other use it as a vacation condo. But the point is cruise ships have a very short service life. Not that the wear out fast, but the tourists always go for the newer/bigger/flashier competitions. So perfectly sound cruise liners get sold for scrap after only a couple years … or they get sold as floating residence platforms to companies in remote areas. Either way they are fully capable seagoing vessels designed to sustain large numbers of people, with associated restaurants, entertainment, shopping. Like a floating high rise complex that could cruse the world, or stay docked in a city as a realestate development. The idea of seasteading (or harbor/river steaming) this way may seem silly … but if a cheap (sold for scrap prices) ship, can’t make a go of being residences in a crowded city like New York, or London, or something. The idea of the custom floating mega structures being viable seems like complete fantasy.

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Everytime I hear of proposals about megastructures or just "environmental-friendly, *renewable resource-powered settlements," I quickly thought that the price tag would be the greatest deterrent.

This has nothing to do with your video but I just felt like saying this because I love your channel. I am a 40 year construction worker out of the south in the United States. The last grade I actually completed was 7 th . In my adult life I've found a burning desire to absorb as much information about anything and everything I can . The lack of formal education has never been an intelligence issue but deplorable schools in my area at that time. Channels like yours , Kyle Hill, smarter everyday veritasium, vsauce and so on make the complexities and nuances of your chosen subjects so understandable and easy to digest and really think about. I think you are a great science communicator and wish you a long and successful career in all of your endeavors. Thank you and your team for all of your hard work.❤🎉❤

That was a great video and it is so awesome that you release your research as a booklet! please do that with every new video if possible, i love looking through these for fun and inspiration

I like seeing hexagons in design because it makes me feel connected to nature. Like bee hives and honeycombs.

This reminds me of a video I watched about Makoko in Lagos, Nigeria. It’s a lagoon floating city that might already hold 100k people. It’s a bit of an impoverished area, but the people were able to build it over decades/centuries without all the fancy stuff that these rich people conceptual designs have shown. Peter Thiel and all those rich libertarians might love it there. Apparently, Makoko has pretty weak government, but the people were able to self-organize to build schools, industries, and some community infrastructure. It’s a bit of an environmental disaster zone but still livable.

This video reminds me so much of the video game Raft. In it, you eventually find an abandoned floating city called Tangaroa. You find message logs of the people in charge, trying to frame the place as a paradise against rising sea levels, while all the people actually running the floating city know that the entire operation is completely unsustainable. Both Raft and this video perfectly reflect the reality of "floating cities".

It seems like "floating vacation homes that rich people build and supply by purchasing from nearby communities" would be a really good thing for those "nearby communities".

So funny thing...not a single floating city idea (thus far purposed) would work and infact worsen much of what they wanna resolve. •Issue one is storms. In deep sea areas or remote island storm become dramatically more vicious with rogue waves and intense rain. Often it's why docks are built into areas where landmass shield them. •issue two is land instability. Of course there's the claims of global warming which would make islands redundant but more sound science also shows land erosion in many of these tiny islands hence ehy they're sinking. There can be structural reinforcing but that balloons costs. •Issue three is cost. To build a floating home you'd need easily need triple or more in cost which prevents normal people from owning it especially considering the area would sell as luxury. •issue four is sustainability. To no ones suprise you need food and water to massive scales for a city, but where? You're surrounded by salt water and fish; which salt water purification is insanely costly (aka more costs) and fishing on a cityscale can kead to over fishing and destroying the environment. Meanwhile outside shipments would raise costs and add pollution. •Issue five is waste management. You live on a roofed raft so where do you think waste and trash go? Well you can recycle meaning you'd need massive facilities which islands cant sustain, ship it to another city, or dump it... All causing more cost or pollution. •Issue six is pollution. Consider how often you see trash on roads now consider places like Denmark who find hundreds of bikes in their water ways. Why would the island be any different? Worse yet consider that amount of transportation coming and going. Each adding vastly more pollution. •Issue Seven is security. If say this community exists out on these distant islands. How do you suppose they'll be protected from pirates or ill intended nations? East Africa is well know for pirates attempting to rob cargo vessels so why would a rich dependent island be any different and why should host nation devout warships for their security? •issue eight is energy. Cities need lots of energy obviously but how would they provide? Sea water is very corrosive to hardware like that meaning it'd need high maintenance. In addition you'd have to use mass array of small generators or clean energy which would need a massive area. Those are just off the top of my head, but whenever anyone says "we're doing it to save the world from climate change" means they're scamming you. Rich are trying to make state funded get away homes, offshore tax heavens, or as a company trying to make bank on idiotic dreams. Best part is every single one purposed would demolish any reefs and only back step on all environmental goals.

We already built a floating city - the set of Waterworld. It wasn't exactly a fully functional city, but even as a set was unbelievably expensive and hard to maintain. Imagine the cost associated with keeping such a structure afloat.

We have Venice, we have a hundred different kinds living on villages build into the sea in Asia and South America but instead of looking into those structures and remaking them for the new purposes it's always the more curves and unused space the better. That's probably the problem. A square on a supporting structure (wood when not taken out of the water again prooved to be very good) with a few cubes on its sides wouldn't look as impressive but it would get the job done and instead of another area owned by "the rich" or even "common" western people with office jobs it would serve those seeking shelter

Your communication style is so clear and thoughtful. I wish you could teach me every subject. I watch your videos even if I'm not interested in the subject matter just to learn about communication.

You guys put soooo much work into these videos, really great work!

Basically, good idea on paper doesn't necessarily equate to good idea in reality. There were boat people communites in various parts of the world and they practically lived and died on the boats and just came to land to trade and get resources, so techincally a fleet or massive amounts of boats could amount to a floating village or city, but would ultimately rely on resources from land to be sustainable. I wonder if it took a combined appraoch to combine ocean farming and planting coral reefs would work?

The thing about Busan is that it's a pretty stable spot to build a floating city. It rarely has any big waves at all. Japan takes the blunt force of the pacific ocean's energy from the East and South East. Any tsunami that triggers in the ocean also hits Japan and never reaches Korea. While there is a strong current in the Korean straight it's pretty much manageable with just anchoring. There are typhoons but generally because the seas around Korea are quite cold, they tend to lose energy fast usually hitting other large land masses 1st before generally landing on Busan. I don't think I've seen anything above a category 2~3 hit Korea.

Seems like something that appeals to idealistic people who don’t have practical understanding of the physical world. Especially by throwing in the “sustainable” tag. It’s hard enough to build on land, building on the ocean is adding another layer of complication that becomes feasible when on land solutions are scarce.

Alright, hear me out: i might have an idea. We take either a big ship, a group of small ships of both, and we built the cities there: each shilp wuold be two or three infrastructures (notably, housing, energy production and food production), while the big ship wuold house most of the functions of the city (schools, hospitals, goverment etc.). We give each boat a robotic bridge, that can connect with othen boats. The main problem (assuming the city wuold be 100% autonomous) wuold be the vegetable production (notably, getting the dirt to farm), getting materials, repairing existing ships in the eventuality they broke or sustain damage, and building new ships, in case one of them sink. We could build some sort of port inside the central ship, so we can build new ships and repair the existing ones. I didn't mention this before, but the ships must be redesigned for their new purpose: of couse, we can't use a cruise ship of a cargo ship for the central one, butnsomething similar in size. Similarly, we can't use regular fishing ships, since they are way too small, but something a bit bigger. And they also have to be able powered by elettricity: we won't be able to get gasoline in open sea, so we have to use the energy provided to us. Further more, each one of them has to be personalized for neccessities (grow food, build stuff, produce energy etc.) And the perks of this idea is that 1) we can make them big as much as we want: we can either have a village of small ships, each with their function of course to enormous caravans formed of dozens of bug ships. 2) we don't run in the same problem of the megastructures. In most of the cases shown in video, if one of the fundamental part of the structure breaks, it's over, meanwhile, if a ship breaks, we can rebuild it. 3) as opposed to floating cities, where they are anchored to one place, these caravans can move to calmer areas of the planet. So, here is my plan, i'm no expert in these things, so if you find some enormous flaw that makes this project impossible or absurdly impractical, then let me know.

I live and work at Halong bay for a few years, and there are floating settlement in the bay itself, with housing, dock, shop, ...etc... but there were never anything close to self sustaining. Even the residents never have the slightest intention to have their life completely independent off the main land, they make frequent trips daily for buying supply, seeling goods and other activities.

Love that this was published at the same time as Adam Something's video on PANGEOS, completely debunking this joke of a proposal.

Thanks, this answers my many questions about why we haven't built any yet!

I tend to think that the people who design these megastructures or arcologies probably don't allow enough possibilities for people to repurpose or rebuild as requirements change. Also they mean a giant upfront investment that is made long before the benefits start to be realized. If you have some giant expensive infrastructure that everything depends on, it's really hard to change. And when the balance it strikes ceases to be the "right" balance as the world changes, it becomes a liability for the inhabitants rather than a benefit. If you're going to have a functioning city, it has to be changeable, expandible, or reducible, in unexpected ways at unexpected scales and times as individual people, businesses, or the municipality itself raise the capital for individual construction projects, with major infrastructure going in or getting cut occasionally. None of these designs answer that need. And since many of their proponents view them as protection from paying taxes, the fact that they'll have to levy their own, rather heavy taxes to maintain their infrastructure is likely to curb a lot of their enthusiasm if revealed early, or result in anger, refusal, and abandonment if revealed late.

The problem with all of these is that designers and planners looking at it from TOP to bottom, instead of BOTTOM to top. If anyone ever have doubts about can we life in 'floating cities'; the answer is YES, WE CAN. Take a look at my country, Philippines. Here, we have villages build on top of water. Sure, they don't have desalination, energy security etc etc etc but they living in it. Granted, most of it is still connected to a land; farms and such is much easier to do on land tbf. But homes, they build it over the sea. Not to mention, problems such as sanitation, waste management, etc yes there is something to be done. However, the thoughts of these hi-tech floating cities being sustainable is also misleading. Misleading because the TOP-DOWN view skews the amount people need to live in floating houses. What they need to do instead is to visit these coastal floating houses here and take a look at what problem comes from living in floating houses like these; solve the problem of sanitation, waste management, and stuff and stuff. THAT is going to give much more benefit for ACTUALLY building a modern, technological floating villages for our future. A lot of those project renders put cars in it; NO, use boats, yo! You live over water, the 'transporation infrastructure' is already there, 'build' by nature! Yeah, the problem with all of these modern project is in tl;dr people just wanted to 'move' modern cities into water, which is something of a crazy idea. Crazy bad, not crazy good. That's it from me. And as always, I love your awesome videos!

this is interesting, it reminds me of an anime called Suisei no Gargantia, its about a futuristic earth when the polar ice caps melted and the surviving people lives on interconnected ships, boats and floating platforms to form they called fleets.

Just discovered your channel. This was a wonderful introduction for me. Well done!

awesome content. I love your projects so much, wish you the best. One question!!! Have you ever received copyright issues as you use project pictures and videos from movies, animes, and other projects?

Urine beverage was not what I expected for an intro to one of your vids damn

Perhaps not quite a city, but the biggest cruise ships today feel like a small town when you're onboard one.

Lately the monsoon seasons have been unpredictable in the Maldives, a tidal surge last year around July- August crashed into the Male' Hulhumale bridge onto the incoming traffic. Swept the cars and motorcycles across with the wave. Let's talk about the sand erosions, unusual sea level rise. Last I saw in Male' the capital city it was literaly 1-2 above in the highest tide. A floating city sounds like the opposite of a heavy duty building built to last. Salt water is very corrosive and eventually it will eat its way up.

Always enjoy bumping into these. Thanks for producing them.

You always make me act like I need to unblur my vision, even when I'm not wearing glasses.

In the book Helldivers (nothing to do with the videogame) humanity uses nuclear and electrical powered airships. Most people live in sqaular in the lower decks. The interesting part the author mentions is everyone who living on these airships were descendants of soilders and high ranking government officials. Most of humanity is unaware of their lineage. The captain of a airship reflects on the fact that the lower decks is unaware how their ancestors were once the special few selected to live on the ship. She finds it ironic and sad, and if they find away to survive this nuclear wasteland it will probably be the soilders and upper deckers who carry on again.

Any time I see any concept for a floating city, the first thing I look for is the ability to submerge and resurface. If your floating city can't safely sink beneath the waves without losing any function at all and then pop back up later entirely unharmed, it will never work. storms and wave topology are more powerful enemies than most people can even imagine, and I'll use torpedoes as my teaching tool. An early torpedo works on a very simple principle: "Poke a big hole in a boat, and it will sink" This is dumb, but for the most part it's pretty effective. But as shipbuilding techonologies improved and damage control became more of a trained art than a "oh shit there's a hole, we better patch it" type of activity, the older, dumber method of sinking ships with a torpedo became much less effective. Instead, it was discovered that the most effective way to sink a ship isn't actually to blow the ship up at all, but to blow up the water beneath it. Ships are extremely good at handling bouyancy forces, evenly distributing their weight across the surface of the hull and avoiding tensile and torsion forces. What ships really suck at, however, is compression. When you blow open a huge pocket of air under a ship, you remove the supporting bouyancy under that part of the ship. The unsupported part of the ship wants to fall down into the hole while the supported parts want to remain at the surface. This produces forces that are so extreme that ships will rip apart like the titanic when their bouyancy is uneven, creating a tradeoff related to what I call the "the ant problem" (It's the square cube law with some pretentiousness and in a much broader scope) Material science dictates that the larger something is, the weaker its materials are relative to the forces involved. In boats and ships, this means that a little coast guard rescue boat can handle a torpedo explosion underneath it because it weighs nothing and is so sturdy that it'll just float back up afterward. Ants can lift hundreds of times their weight because the materials they're made of are much stronger relative to their body sizes than any mammal's. Even cargo ships have to have deep keels to protect them from wave height differences, since at the scale of tankers and the like, even the elevation of a single swell at one end of the ship can tincan the hull. Cruise ships and tankers have to be careful in rough seas. Warships can be destroyed by a big pocket of air under them. If your floating city is at all exposed to wave action or bouyancy irregularity, it's headed for bottom faster than me after a few shots. But if you can retreat to a depth that is not affected by the surface waves, you can bypass most of the forces involved. If you sink just deeply enough to evade the wind-blown chaos above, then resurface afterward, you'll be much better off. STILL an absolute feat of mechanical, physical, and social engineering to even make it work at all, but if it can sink, it enters the realm of possibility. The only other option is to construct a spar-type vertical bouy that can disperse most of the surface forces throughout a cylindrical substructure that makes up most of the city's volume and mass, still well below the surface. The sea is not a gentle place, and most human buildings can't withstand the shear forces produced by even two to five PSI on exterior walls. If you want a floating city, I'm all for it. But if a design LOOKS like a city, you can immediately and soundly ignore it as sheer fantasy.

I don't know where, but I heard from someone that an entire tribe ended up in a single night chopping down a forest, built a ton of rafts, tied them together, and sailed off into the blue until they found an island. I think they ended up surviving for months before they found an island and they were well fed from sea-life. The wood they used was hallow which was why they didn't need to dry it out, and the plant fibers they used were incredibly strong in the water. While they were at sea the rafts they used became it's own little micro ecosystem since sea plants would grow out of the bottom of the rafts and fish would come to eat it and lay their eggs there, so they could easily get food by fishing. I don't know how they solved the water problem and I don't know where they started or ended up but if anyone else can find the full story please let me know!

5:38 yes, it will still function because waves do not break on the surface, they 'stumble' over the ocean floor which retains its shape underwater so replacing them with floating barriers works just as well to catch the leftovers and may even be used to build tidal powerplants.

I just discovered your site and now I'm going through your earlier vids. Great topics and social commentaries. When i was younger i wanted to be an architect but ended up in graphic design. As a admirer of architecture still, your site and insights in this field is quite refreshing

I keep getting stunned by the production value of your videos. Absolutely amazing. Please keep doing what you do.

Floating cities do exist... BUT they are based around individual communities... small groups of boats and platforms gathered. They are often on lakes and rivers rather then open ocean but in some cases if its a sheltered bay sure. Usually starting with a few house boats, more and more boats gather, often in no order... with barges being built up as medical clinics or such... some houses may be built on silts while others remain floating. Stores, especially restaurants may be fixed, but often its a single or 2 people on a small boat that moves around the area calling out their goods or foods. Then pulling up to a boat and cooking a meal right on the spot. The problem is, in communities like this,waste is often just dumped into the water. It is possible to build up a community with "infrastructure barges" Maybe a power barge to offer "shore power" via either solar, or wind turbine power, with gas backup. Its possible to have a water purification barge... even a waste water treatment barge... but these all cost money to build and maintain.. however. with a standardization. and maybe the use of jackbarges... you could build a modular floating town where needed

It reminds me when I played Minecraft trying to build an functional aquatic structure, which had nowhere to 'mine', so I eventually had to build them on shore to do mining things on the land.

In the "Video I Didn't Know I Wanted" category, this one takes top spot, easy. Thanks for it and keep them coming. Even the intro to your sponsor was entertaining. Well done.

great video! love the work that you and your team put into this

I love your videos! Thanks to the team for this one 😊

If a floating city doesn't won't work, just go fully underwater. We can call it Rapture! Oh, wait.... sm

"privatized" government is explicitly *NOT* "chosen by the people"... if you don't understand the difference between Public & Private, you're being misleading on this point

I think my vision is actually similar to Dogen city, but it could more achievable my way. I’d use medium sized cargo barges to start with, modify the hulls to have thicker walls and more air gapped spaces in case of a rupture. Then weld and bolt them together to form a larger octagon, then fill in the middle some way. After the base is formed, use prepared shipping containers for living quarters, system controls, power stations and battery storage, sewage recycling. Use solar, wind and wave generators for power, or nuclear. We’d be able to stack enough containers for 20,000+ people. Then anchor it on the west coast of South America, less chance of hurricanes down there.

My guess is you would have to reinforce your lagoon that is inside your island with a large scale sea wall built on the island designed to resist their eventual flooding probably with large anchoring supports being driven deep enough to not have to worry too much about the land shifts caused by the water.

They should just build them as barges with various modular functions, that are never permanently anchored, they can attach and detach from each other fairly easily, and move from place to place. They would be tethered most of the time, but could move around as needed, so like if you needed housing more in one area and less where a housing structure happens to be, it could just pick up and move over there instead. Individual units could even be traded in and out, like they do when building cruise ships. The underlying "boat" part would have high costs, but the things built on top of it could be more affordable.

The only people I talked to really interested in this were rich (usually crypto rich) and their motivation was to not pay taxes. Incorrect calculation in my mind because clearly these "cities" are uber expensive not only to build but also to maintain, so taxes will definitely be needed. Then you have to bring a lot of stuff to them, they're in no way self sustaining. I'd like to see a design that is very clear on how they can last, for example how do you maintain/repair/replace the hull after decades so that the city can last centuries.

My major question is where does the waste go (sewage) for these floating cities? does it go into a holding tank to be cleaned later? does it go to a plant to have it cleaned? Or does it go straight into the ocean?

maldives is such underrated and beutiful country (not just the tourist beach resorts), and am so excited for this future that adds on to the maldivian culture.

For Oceanix project, will it really be a floating city if its fixed to the sea bed though?

Demi can you do an analysis of habitat 67 like they even made a unreal engine model of its original and current design

You mentioned a main point that we do not have this kind of synergy on land, there is no way they can make it on the water. It is another example of people ignoring the problems we currently have and trying to move forward anyway. This adds any new issues that come up to those already in existence.

I think one way to get around the cost element for the Maldives would be to make floating platforms that would be cheaper than complete houses. Just let the people build what they want on these platforms. As far as rising sea levels for these platforms in the lagoons, we have built islands before. Just pile more sand on top of what is there. It may not be the cheapest thing, but it is doable.

Salutations Dami Lee! Some of the most important aspects of a city on the ocean are resources; fresh water, raw materials, fresh vegetables and grains, and other food items such as beef, pork, poultry, and fish. Mineral resources as well are important for a sustainable city or colony on the ocean, and sewage treatment must also be taken into consideration as well as energy production also. Such a project might be more feasible on a lake even, which might be an easier place to experiment with than the ocean, to begin with. There is a huge project in Dubai that you left out of this video, that is attempting to tackle some of the obstacles that have kept many of these projects from being started, and at great expense they have attempted to build up land to build upon from the sands of the surrounding sea. Other locations where floating villages could be of use, are places where flooding is already a hazard, such as in floodplains along major waterways and large rivers, or wherever floods occur regularly due to heavy rainfall or quickly melting snow packs, such as is happening in many areas across the United States and in California recently, due to changing weather patterns. Many areas in Europe have also experienced flooding due to changing weather patterns as well, floating villages and cities could augment the existing infrastructure and help alleviate the impact of flooding in some of those areas. Florida could also make use of such technology, and funding for such projects could be obtained from many of the more wealthy residents who could more easily afford such housing projects. This is a fascinating subject. I would like to see some of these projects being put into use. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and posting this video! Please have an excellent and awesome day! ☀️✨🌎

I just stumbled upon your channel! In love. Have you ever considered covering underground cities à la “City of Ember” or Hugh Howey “Wool”?

I’m curious to know, and maybe I missed it in the video, what happens when the water rises? If they are anchored into the sea bed wouldn’t they stay anchored and the water rise above the island??

I hope that the SF Bay Area along with the Netherlands could be one of the few good places for the modular version. We have a bay and delta with plenty of shallow areas these could be anchored on. Waves are a minor concern bc we only have one small channel connecting us to the ocean. Hopefully the pillars in the bay could be used to anchor native sea grasses to and expand the wetlands expanding protection for the shore line. Furthermore we are one of the few places the economics work out $250,000 single family homes with water access would be a god send and would help us stave off development on our limited wild lands

NGL, that intro looked like a collaboration with Adam Something. What makes it funnier is that I come from HIS video on the same subject... which made me spit my (non-recycled) water. That said, from a serious perspective, it is a very interesting topic when seen from the vanity/money making side. Like arcologies, the only reason they would be viable is necessity. And we should dread the conditions that make such things necessary. PD: Hey, Dami, maybe you and Adam should make a collab video next time you are tackling another thing like floating cities, mega towers, line buildings, or other absurd architecture pipe-dreams.

Where do they keep the bugs?

One thing that I've been wondering about is, say vast swathes of the earth gets submerged-- where do these people imagine we'll be getting the resources needed to keep all these futuristic cities functioning? Like the Maldives floating city-- if they need to repair a house, would they need to import wood/etc? What about metal? What about the plants etc needed to process raw materials into construction materials? I've been wondering about this for a while now. I just can't imagine anything self-sustaining when it can't even repair itself without needing even screws and bolts imported.

I love these concepts and its one of the reasons why i felt endeared by Jacque Fresco's The Venus Project, his vision was indeed a fully selfsustaining city. He sadly passed back in 2017 and it's been rather quiet on that front ever since. I'd love to see you dive into the prosperity and or challenges of his project, vision and where it potentially is today. I genuinely appreciate these videos of yours.

The problem with “closed systems “ is that there is no freedom. Free people do not want to become termites in the service of some corporate type. Methinks.

Adam something colab?

You should have mentioned the floating hotel that lived off the coast of Townsville, Queensland, Australia, floating above the world's biggest tropical reef. It was there in the 80's and the wastewater was by far the biggest issue. It poisoned the reef so it had to be taken back to land for processing. They took it to Vietnam for a while, then Vietnam sold it to North Korea. It now sits rusting away at a port a short way north of the DMZ. You could build a reed bed on your floating city but it would be a very large space for each resident. Where I live you're not allowed a septic tank for on-site water treatment unless you have at least an acre of land to treat it. Reeds are more efficient, but you're still looking at a very large barge of poopoo water parked next to your escapist fantasy.

You’re videos are so good! Thank you!

Architecture channel with the greatest editing and content effort on YT, congratulations..

billionaires/trillionaires proposing incredible infrastructures seeking investments for technology that barely exists ... to help climate refugees? Really? people fell for that?

I've never watched a DamiLee video until now. This is quite a start. 🙂

Wouldnt a cheaper option be to build on land now while the levels are low so that if the levels do rise you can just reinhabit the new floating city thst was built while it was land?

...the venus project...that seems a sensible start , what you think ?

Peter Thiel's group is just about the opposite of a basis for doing anything remotely beneficial for society as a whole - or even in part. It's about rich guys fleeing governments for the benefit of these rich guys. The bulk of these sea-living proposals are similarly self-serving and unworkable at any scale. That's before we get to the practical considerations you discuss at length that make these proposals and their like nonstarters - or, at best, nonfinishers.

As some one with a passing interest in city planning, I have to wonder just how all of these floating cities are supposed to get fresh drinking water, and deal with sewage. I can also only imagine how much it would cost to build even the smallest versions of these, compared to developing similarly-scales communities on land.

Big applause to you and your team! This video is super interesting and d informative. Also that plug for Dropbox is the best ad I’ve ever seen. So well done!

So, we build a city on the ocean or in sheltered waters. It's anchored to the shore or sea bottom. That sounds like a ship to me. Ships need constant maintenance to survive on the sea. Do these plans talk about the constant need for servicing to prevent your house from becoming a new artificial reef?

i think one of the main things holding these projects back is the need for a few missing pieces of technology. one of the main being a hull material or coating that PREVENTS sealife(mussels/algae/etc) from attaching to the structure. also an efficient and cheaper desalizination solution... and waste reclamation.... etc...

When I get sick of NY, I grab a commuter jet to Florida. My kids want to live someplace different, so they move to Wyoming. Decades pass, my sole residence is in Florida, my kids have kids and want to be near me and their kids eventually will want to go to college in ? Why are we assuming that everybody stops wanting to travelling or relocating ?

Man as impossible as they might seem I just love mega structure projects. The idea of mastering Nature to that point just fills me with awe

One thing I never hear about on these is protection. A floating city outside the zone of countries would be a tempting target for pirates. Especially in some parts of the world.

I think the reason you see things like the Hive Cities being these conglomeration of 1% (or even 0.1%?)fancy high rise living, 9% middle class decent living, and 90% slums, is because that's a more realistic mix based on the real world. I think if any of these will truly be sustainable, they will either have to wait for the income gap to dramatically lower, and median wages to rise, or they will have to be designed with a huge disparity in affluence, with the 1% footing most of the bill for the sake of everyone else.

I would think that the best place for a floating nation would be at one of the garbage patches. You wouldn't have to be anchored and your sea nation would be fairly centralized to a specific area which is in in shipping lanes.

Being connected to the ground, we get so much for free that we don't think about. Most of us don't have to worry about the ground rusting out from under us and our house just floating away. On a floating city, that structural maintenance would be a nightmare! The taxes necessary to maintain the basic structure would be outrageous, and you can't just drive to Home Depot to get replacement parts. Imagine the cost of a pine 2x4 out there.