Our Future of Living on the Water - Floating Cities?

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[captainsinclair]

“The 21st Century… Mankind has colonized the last frontier on earth: The Ocean. As captain of the Seaquest and her crew, We are its guardians. For beneath the surface lies the future.”

[XLessThanZ]

Living with salt water is a challenge. Salt water wreaks havoc on everything. Also, if you want to see what a floating city would be like in a storm, watch YT videos on cruise ships in storms. It's horrible. I would like to live in a city like this, but not during a storm. They'd need to engineer something to at least dissipate the waves headed towards the city. Once they do that, winds and rain will be a minor inconvenience.

[ravennus]

As an islander, I think the design and concept is beautiful, awesome and inspiring but VERY IMPRACTICAL..
The problems we often had:
1. Medical Emergencies- Hospitals are not that reliable. We had to take a boat in order to get to somewhere else and people often die on transit.
2. Cost of living- basic goods are way expensive because you literally need to import it from somewhere else. Supplies are limited and delays in shipments.
3. Isolation- the feeling that you are left-out from the rest of the world.
4. Maintenance of Structure- sea-salt is very good at rotting away stuff..
5. Economy- no good paying jobs because there are no big companies around due to limited space and low population.
And many more..
Proposal- Japanese strategy, they cut half top of a mountain and turned it into a city. The rest of the soil used to extend elevate the flood-prone shores. It's way more sufficient, practical, feasible and less cost than floating island. The floating island idea is already hostorically ancient.

[ltlbuddha]

Kudos to Matt for actually recognising the most of these "solutions" as for rich people.

[metalfox]

With the internet full of reasons to be pessimistic about climate change, im grateful your content is always optimistic, creative and encouraging. Great work Matt!

[birdrocket]

This is what happens when architects don’t talk to civil engineers

[AleksandarStefanovic]

5:20 Ah yes, the common imperial unit of football pitches.

[gulserenyldrm]

I hope I can work on this project one day.Very nice video thanks :))

[tonycasey]

Just brilliant work, , , hello from Ireland

[ronmaximilian]

Instead of just having floating cities, couldn't we use this to increase the amount of biomass in the ocean? We could grow and harvest useful algae and even krill. This would allow for more sustainable aquaculture for fish and human consumption.

[MrBadbonesaw]

built to withstand a cat 5 hurricane, but it would be one hell of a ride. Make sure to take some anti-nausea medicine or flee town for about a week

[StuartdeHaro]

Hexagonal units making a village that interlocks with other hexagonal units? Someone plays Settlers of Catan.

[aaronrobbins]

I often dream about a floating home, like a house boat, but built for the ocean, using renewable energies rather than sails to move around. Preferably very large with underwater windows or a glass bottom

[t_c]

I'm not sure I understand the concern. The only reason this is a problem is because people have some overblown ideal of being coastal. Distribution of people throughout the country is the solution, not increasing the capacity to concentrate at the coast. Wyoming, Montana, the dakotas, new mexico, Idaho, etc. all have 10x less people per square mile than California, who already has an amazing amount of unused inland.
The best part of this solution is its completely free, and would even benefit the usa and each state that got more population boost from this strategy. Not to mention we wouldn't have to build any of these complicated water harvesting systems or engineer around storms.

Or we can concentrate at the coasts and spend $400 billion on building walls (walls we cant even manage to build on solid land at the border)

[stephenpahl]

I remember seeing the first OTEC (off the coast of Hawaii) in early 1970's and the first story about Seament around the same time which included an idea to build complete buildings that are then pulled up on shore (they did a sand castle like object), glad to see a return of the ideas

[tomkelly]

This idea was covered very extensively in a book I am reading called the Millenial project. The concept there was more about creating more habitable space along the most habitable part of the most habitable planet that we know of. Since Earth is 3/4 water, it makes sense to move from land to water to create more places for people to live. Certainly floating cities would be less likely to flood then ones that don't. The Ocean Thermal energy plan is fantastic, I love it.

[Wiggaz]

This is an awesome idea for a videogame. Like Surviving Mars but on water.

[Facetiously.Esoteric]

I've always wanted to build my own island like that guy in Mexico.

[coltonsnyder]

Floating cities could even help increase biodiversity, reduce ocean water acidity, and increase oxygen content if we cultivated the area with the right species. Around 70% of the ocean is watery desert currently. Figuring out the waves part for taller buildings, especially during storms, is a big challenge though.

[Tehom]

Alas, the "seacrete" idea that they're relying on turns out to be a simple miscalculation. People got really excited when a paper claimed that a small current running thru seagoing wires would cause limestone to form around the wires quickly, but on inspection it was a miscalculation and is off by several orders of magnitude.