Read it.
I would say No, but that’s just me.
Until the late 1980s, nestled behind the Yan Ma Tei breakwater in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay, you could find tens of thousands of boat-dwellers who formed a bustling, floating district. The residents were members of the Tanka community, and their ancestors were fishermen who retreated from warfare on land to live permanently in their vessels. Until the mid-20th century, these traditional outcasts were forbidden even to step ashore.
God forbid that anybody should inquire as to why that was so. They’re the victim-of-the-week, so they must be morally superior.
The typhoon shelter was famous for its restaurants’ cuisine – including Under Bridge Spicy Crab – and it was a nightlife hub, alive with mahjong games and hired singers. Shops on sampan (flat boats) catered to the floating district’s needs.
And night-life and cuisine are what SWPL journalists are all about.
It may seem like science fiction, but as rising sea levels threaten low-lying nations around the world, neighbourhoods like this may become more common. Whereas some coastal cities will double down on sea defences, others are beginning to explore a solution that welcomes approaching tides. What if our cities themselves were to take to the seas?
Which is like saying, Gee, these Latin American cities all have these crowded slums nearby, maybe we should try that? (What’s wrong with this picture?) The problem with ‘floating cities’ is that they float, and if they ever cease to float, many people will die. These are the sort of people who build their fashionable houses on stilts in the canyons around L.A., and then weep when a brushfire or a mudslide land them in a pile of rubble.
The Nigerian-born architect Kunlé Adeyemi proposes a series of A-frame floating houses to replace the existing slum. As proof of concept, his team constructed a floating school for the community. Still, many buildings do not make a city: infrastructure remains a problem here. One solution would be to use docking stations with centralised services, rather like hooking up a caravan to power, water and drainage lines at a campground.
Like the parking lot at, uh, Walmart? (Aaaack! Unclean! Unclean!)
You could extend an existing city like London into the water quite far before ever being seriously challenged by infrastructure issues.
Not if the government builds it. And good luck getting that by the eco-nazis. The paperwork alone would take a century.
Florida architect Jacque Fresco, meanwhile, foresees a time when humans must colonise the sea, to escape land made uninhabitable by overpopulation.
I’m surprised that anybody still believes that hoary myth. Population levels, especially in the First World, have been dropping for decades, and the available evidence shows that when the Developing World gets Develops, their population rates will drop, too. This guy needs to have a long talk with Paul Ehrlich.
He has spent his career designing cities of the future, and himself lives in a dome-shaped prototype.
Okay, I’ll bite: How is ‘designing cities of the future’ a ‘career’? Does he make money at it? If so, where are these ‘cities of the future’? (Wouldn’t that make them ‘cities of the present’?) Or do people just give him money for airy schemes that won’t be seen for years and years? Man, I would love a job like that.
Mobility among the waves lends floating communities a degree of political independence. The Seasteading Institute, founded by Patri Friedman (grandson of Milton), proposes a series of floating villages, and claims to be in active negotiations with potential host nations that would give the villages political autonomy. Billed as a startup incubator for political systems, the aquatic communities would serve as experiments in governance – and represent a rejection of what Seasteaders see as big government intrusion.
Oh, yeah, as if that would ever happen. Looks like somebody jumped the gun on the ‘legalize pot’ initiative.