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Wet & wild living becomes a reality

Posted Oct 1, 2009

Almost fifteen years after Kevin Costner’s dud film Waterworld, we’re returning to the same concept, but perhaps this time there’s a happier ending. 

When the construction of the world's largest artificial island – Palm Island, in Dubai - was announced, in 2002, the whole world thought it was only a Sultan’s whim. Six years later and the first Palm Island has been completed, partially resolving Dubai’s beach shortage problem, with its two larger sisters on their way. Just as that other other artificial island paradis “World Islands” enters its development phase, could this be we ask, the beginning of a new way of wet living?


The attempt to fight with seas to obtain new places to live is not of course a new story: Amsterdam and Venice would never exist without society’s strength and dedication, however now it would seem there’s a new way of doing things.

Whereas Venice was mainly constructed on existing small islands, and The Netherlands’s used dams, Dubai’s solution is to build completely new islands to solve their survival problems

Returning to The Netherlands, Almere a small city today, was thirty years ago nothing more than a village. Today it has 180,000 citizens and a plan. 60,000 homes and 100,000 work places will be generated on the sea over the course of the next twenty years, transforming Almere into The Netherland’s fifth largest city.

Almere and Dubai are attempts to enlarge cities, but there are also attempts to push the boundaries by creating entire cities in the middle of the oceans. “The Swimming City” by Andras Gyorfi is a floating town, which won the Seastead’s first design contest (seasteading.org). Its mission is to further the establishment and growth of permanent, autonomous ocean communities, enabling innovation with new political and social systems.

Wannabe royalty take note - the future may not only be island living but the birth of new nations too.

Giuliano Federico

 

TAGS: kevin costner water world dubai palm island venice world islands seastead technology

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