Would you live in a "Floating City"?

Submitted by jfd0037 t3_10ra4yx in Futurology

There are competing plans to launch the first floating city, with Pusan, Korea, and Maldives being announced as locations for 2025 and 2027 respectively. The Pusan plan is UN-backed and led by a company called Oceanix. As one would imagine, much thought has gone into making the environment highly sustainable, leveraging water conservation technology, solar power, aqua- and hydroponics, etc.

I’m curious to know at a high level what people think of the prospect of living in a floating city. What would you need to have to make it feasible for you? What would be your biggest fears? I could ask countless sub-questions, but I’ll leave it at that. Please share your thoughts and questions openly.

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skymoods t1_j6uvsmn wrote

it took me until checking a search engine to realize you didn't mean floating in the sky. disappointed....

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Surur t1_j6ulawr wrote

Poor maintenance would be the biggest issue. Can you imagine?

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tmp04567 t1_j6w5iez wrote

It's usually what sunk, rather literally, the projects of the libertarians on water so far, lol. They're not willing to invest sufficient coins in maintaining their toys and it sinks at the first big storm.

"Sea steading" became a running gag, at that point.

Now, the Oil Party are forced to pay for oil rigs maintenance tho if they want to keep access to oil, so mysteriously those tend to stay mostly afloat by large. Crazy that difference when the means are put in, lmao. ('cause yes an oil plateform is basically a floating city the size of an aircraft carrier, think CATOBAR big, with sometimes thousands aboard, based on offshore oil mining & pumping away. With motivation for it to stay functional, this time.)

https://www.aggressivehydraulics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Oil_platform_Hydraulics-scaled.jpg

https://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20160727&t=2&i=1147232826&w=976&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&sq=&r=LYNXNPEC6Q0I2

https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/oil-rig-and-vessel-at-night-bradford-martin.jpg

^ Yes it's a giant supertanker for oil docked, if dwarfed, next to it.

And when they pay people adequately they even got enough crazies to properly staff em, all the time, year long : https://www.maritimeherald.com/oil-rig-workers-salaries/

> Oil Rig Workers Average Salaries of $100,000 A Year

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Cook-on-Offshore-Natural-Gas-Rig-is-Paid-240000-a-Year.html

Yes there's some danger around (gas, falling in water or lower decks, ...); but people still almost fight to get a feet in with those wages.

https://work.chron.com/average-salary-workers-deep-draft-vessels-7101.html

^ tens of thousands a year 'cause they want oil and suddenly even the tanker boats are suddenly all crewed too. NoBoDyWaNtStoWorK right. For 3$ tipped, yes. Put 40-270K and the entire old crew lines up on deck and texas has their oil delivery.

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SpiteAspect t1_j6xajgg wrote

Damn I knew they were big but seeing the supertanker next to it really puts it in perspective

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[deleted] t1_j6uibso wrote

[deleted]

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Tensor3 t1_j6vlczu wrote

Why do some people live on cruise ships already? Probably because they feel like it, or because they are hiring

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Jjetsk1_blows t1_j6xq7y3 wrote

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. These are probably two of the most realistic reasons for living on a floating city!

Edited for clarity

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Codydw12 t1_j6uicnz wrote

I support sea-steading cities. I have some major questions with it such as actual location, how it would deal with severe weather, desalination tactics, energy and overall density but on the surface building real estate out of nothing is only a positive.

If by 2040 someone can make a floating Hong Kong or Singapore or NYC with energy and water independence (possibly food as well depending on vertical farming updates) I'd move in a heart beat.

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OriVerda t1_j6ws5dh wrote

Completely unrelated to the severity of the topic but "floating cities" paired with the year 2040 triggered some of my favourite memories from an old Playstation 1 classic, Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere. TL;DR the game's set in 2040 and features an aptly named floating city called Megafloat.

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kotukutuku t1_j6um7p4 wrote

Floating Hong Kong weighs have profound issues in even the slightest swell

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EricHunting t1_j6vzlbd wrote

There are two aspects to this proposition; communities built at shore in sheltered water and communities built on the open sea. The two examples are of the former type, both relying on natural bays and connection to nearby urban facilities. So these are not really very different from the houseboat communities that have existed in many places for centuries or their more modern alternatives developed in the US/Canadian northwest and the Netherlands.

Houseboat communities were originally created to exploit what was once undervalued (because of their industrial aspect) waterfront areas, avoid costly coastal property prices, and their property taxes creating attractors for the poor and alienated dockworking class resulting in what would be their main appeal; eclectic makeshift architecture with a nautical character and a bohemian multi-ethnic atmosphere. This, of course, is what resulted in most modern municipalities systematically destroying them, with those that remain evolved into eclectic neighborhoods with some tourism gravitas or enough wealthy folk able to bully local bureaucracies into submission. San Francisco's houseboat community is a prime example. In the Netherlands, however, they became simply another way to facilitate development in a place flood prone and short on land and were sponsored by government, but in that case they have been far less eclectic in design and largely indestinguishable from the upper-middle-class townhouse developments of the region. The developers behind the Maldives project noted is a famous developer of these very projects. Similar development has gone on in the Seattle/Vancouver area for some time, but this being the sort of country it is, the aspect is more of a variation on the gated community. The ferrocement construction technology used is quite common to what is now known as the 'floating home industry' and has been in use for many decades. Basically, slab foundations on water. There is really nothing very special about living in these places, since they've all mostly lost that bohemian eclecticism that once made them appealing and are indestinguishable from other housing development --though these projects are more mixed-use. It's just another way to squeeze more high-end waterfront housing into overloaded urban areas, now with an eco-tech greenwashing angle rather than the bohemian subculture appeal of the past. However, the Maldives project is likely to be exclusively tourism-centric and rather theme-park-like.

Open sea communities remain something of a pipe dream because of the overhead of very large breakwater structures or active wave attenuation structures needed to exist in open sea conditions and the need for independent transportation with very modest operational economies of scale yet intercontinental range. (which, basically, doesn't exist off-the-shelf) In spite of this, they remain something of an obsession for those enamored of the fantasy of Galt's Gulch style autonomous zones or, even less likely, total personal autarky. They are, technically, feasible to create but unlikely except through some very large industrial venture --and there are only a few possibilities there-- or the efforts of billionaires motivated, perhaps, by the desire to escape the consequences of a collapse of civilization on land they so greatly contributed to. Most proposals for these marine colonies have, to date, been grossly ill-conceived, their creators more enamored of their AnCap ideological fantasies than the practical logistics of creating sustainable ventures and places to live. If not Muskian techno-grifts from the start, they usually end in similar fashion...

Open sea marine settlements could become a vector of development for some powerful renewables technology; OTEC, polyspecies mariculture, H-ship and hybrid sail technology, etc. But their huge flaw is that we simply don't have a low-carbon way to build them as they would rely on concrete we, as yet, have no practical carbon-neutral/negative alternatives for. And we're talking massive, Hoover Dam, volumes of concrete here these things could never persist long enough (given the 50 year at best lifespan of concrete in even benign conditions) to compensate for.

Coastal settlements have a similar problem with concrete (the Oceanix company talks, in their marketing pitches, of some variant of the long-debunked Hilbertz electrolytic accretion process, which is doubtful), but need only use ferrocement for their base platforms. Actual buildings would be made from lighter materials, which have many sustainable options --assuming anyone cares to use them.

One promising green role for such communities has been in eco-tourism where locating habitation on the water can preserve the natural habitats nearby people are seeking to visit. And a number of people in the Northwest have adopted floating homes on this very basis, wishing to preserve the pristine beauty of the forest properties they are living next to. And this comes with the advantage of an essentially pre-made mobile home quickly deployed, much like the Tiny Homes but less restricted in size and easy to expand. That's something I could certainly get behind, though it would need to be supported with some equally green transportation, the boats and small planes common to the area pretty bad in fossil fuel use. Being 'off grid' isn't really as green as it's made out to be. In this context such communities have potential for creating eco-villages, eco-cities, and proto-arcologies in the remote locations these are usually relegated to, but with less local impact, exploring the possibilities of various communal/mutualist/cooperative living arrangements, urban farming and independent industry technology, and the like. But, as yet, no one has actually proposed such things. (well, with the exception of yours truly...)

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Surur t1_j6wdgel wrote

You seem knowledgeable on this issue. What about the version where they just lash ships together? Like in the great junk armada as depicted in Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

We see boats being scrapped all the time, so presumably, there is a supply of boats which could grow organically?

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TraceSpazer t1_j6xo220 wrote

Issue seems like it would be the need for a breakwater or ships large enough to weather inclement weather and the occasional rogue wave.

The great junk armada would sink rather quickly.

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Arcologycrab t1_j734idx wrote

I mean a bunch of sailors who got trapped in the Suez Canal linked their cargo ships together to make what is essentially a floating apartment

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EricHunting t1_j6zzcm3 wrote

Again, limited to locations that are already sheltered bays or have some other structures providing this shelter. Under normal sea conditions a lashed-together collection of ships will grind each other to bits. This is why oil rigs can't often have anything docked to them. They use cranes to move people and equipment from boats. Naval ships setup cable shuttles to move people and goods between ships. It's possible that some locations on the sea --in some strange future weather conditions-- may remain so calm as to allow ships to safely dock to each other for long periods. But the first storm to come along would quickly destroy them. Snow Crash seems to have been borrowing on the folklore of the Sargasso Sea whose large patches of seaweed were once said to trap ships and bind them into strange communities of the lost. This was often depicted in old adventure literature, comics, and fantasy art. But it was just myth. Sargasso weed is very light and while it gathers together in gyres like plastic trash, it is also constantly being broken up and reformed.

There was once a proposal for a Sargasso-like marine settlement based on the principles of a colonial organism, composed of dwelling pods, energy 'animals' with deployable wind and solar, fish pens, and other special floating modules linked together by a web of cables and always digitally aware of their relative positions. Using parasails for propulsion, it would gather its parts together closer when the sea conditions were calm allowing gangways to be used --trying to travel mostly in the 'doldrums' along the Equator-- but would spread out over a larger area to avoid collisions when the weather was rough. The catch with this idea was that dwellings were like the escape pods used by oil rigs and people would have to put up with a very rough ride every time the weather turned poor. However, such a concept might be combined with 'sea tower' designs using SPAR buoy structures that were more comfortable, but very difficult to fabricate or repair at sea.

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Surur t1_j70x9bo wrote

Thank you. That was very informative.

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Crembels t1_j6uzwxx wrote

No, it would pretty much be a manicured playground for rich people and retirees, especially if its the kind of city that is capable of moving around.

Travelling to and from it would be needlessly difficult and the social scene of it would suffer as a result. Land based cities have people constantly moving in and out of them, travel is simple and logistics are more easily dealt with. What kind of live music scene would such a city have? Schools? Universities? Many cultural things we take for granted in current cities grew naturally due to the sheer amount of different people finding themselves living in them, eg. my city has a famous coffee and cafe culture due to all the Italian and Greek immigrants from after WW2.

A floating, constructed city is going to by nessesity be far more restrictive with both the number and type of people who can move into it. How would such cultural scenes develop, if they would at all, without being plasticy astroturfed "initiatives" by the controlling corporation?

On that note, a corporation leading this also gives a bad taste in my mouth. It would be a presige project for them, and would be tightly controlled as a result. Actual cities are organic things that grow, shrink, experience unrest and calm. A city like this would be a funding hole and moneymaking scheme and likely riddled with extremely invasive surveilance technology under the guise of "serving your needs" that you'd have to agree to in order to live there, but is just a means to excise anyone the corporate entity deems "subversive".

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chcampb t1_j6vifmr wrote

I'm more interested in the constituting technology.

In order to indefinitely float a city on the ocean you need it to

  1. Generate all its own power
  2. Sustain all its vegetation
  3. Grow its own food
  4. Not get eroded
  5. Provide hospital and other infrastructure for its residents
  6. Desalinate enough water for everyone on board

So if you want to get rid of 4 you could theoretically have all the tech for a standalone, compartmentalized city somewhere near the ocean. Why not just, then, instead do that sort of thing?...

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Infernalism t1_j6uipyl wrote

We have more than enough space on land to build new cities.

There's no reason to build a floating city outside of wanting funding and attention.

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itsgoingtobeebanned t1_j6uvif6 wrote

Good insulation against cataclysmic events. A floating city on the other side of the world would be least impacted by a meteor strike.

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Synaps4 t1_j6vm11a wrote

makes no sense. If a tidal wave has just swamped denver at 1mile elevation, your floating city has been demolished by that same wave.

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itsgoingtobeebanned t1_j6vm6ra wrote

floating city?

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Synaps4 t1_j6vtt1a wrote

a mile high tidal wave?

Even a city is capable of capsizing.

If mountains are going underwater, the world has ended, and no amount of floating is going to save you. Civilization ended and with it all the arable land and all the production facilities on which your city depends.

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itsgoingtobeebanned t1_j6vutvr wrote

Imagine its built of warertight compartments that when broken apart by said initial wave they have inflatable buffers that keep them afloat but also buffered from each other. A skyscraper made of lifeboats fastened together basically but a lot more complex. If you know ots gonna happen you could build a house of cards designed to topple as softly as possible.

We don't need arable land if we can harness ocean power properly. Seaweed farms, seafood = basic food requirements met.

I agree we are probably fucked but what if it's a puny meteor that only takes out Europe and the dust cloud goes away in 6 months?

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Synaps4 t1_j6w0na1 wrote

A) the actual complexities of a city made out of separable bulkheads all watertight and self sufficient is far beyond anything humanity has ever built, and things 1/1000th as complicated (like the soviet moon rocket) exploded when we tried.

B) Small scale seaweed farms are not going to feed 200,000 people and if they could the people would be hugely nutrition deficient and anyway the ecological collapse caused by such an event might ensure the seaweed doesn't even grow, with the nutrients in the water being eaten by massive algal blooms or worse

C) Major industries like metal smelting, plastics manufacturing, oil refining, chip fabrication, etc do not function on small scales and eat enormous amounts of power which you would not get from floating solar

D) We're talking about a 6 month dust cloud so the seaweed doesnt grow and the solar panels barely make any power for 6 months...everyone dies.

Just move to Kathmandu above the water line instead. It's cheaper and far less likely to fail

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Surur t1_j6wdkd4 wrote

The plot of 2012 the movie.

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NovelStyleCode t1_j6vsoky wrote

a floating city gets to deal with full force tsunamis and hurricanes, land helps shield a lot of that energy during natural disasters but on water? goodluck.

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JeremiahBoogle t1_j70arfh wrote

Hurricanes are a problem, tsunamis not so much. At sea a Tsunami is basically almost imperceptible, the wave only builds to dangerous heights when it reaches land and the water depth shallows.

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Redditing-Dutchman t1_j6w9yjv wrote

Earth as a whole... yes. But many countries not so much. Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, even The Netherlands has had this vision to move the main airport to the sea, because there is no space elsewhere.

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StarChild413 t1_j6wc996 wrote

And? We're not exploring space (to what extent we are at least planning to do it manned) to find new places to put extra people either but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it

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Margincall1975 t1_j6uu78k wrote

Well, not technically, but we are living on a floating planet.

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firebird7802 t1_j6w8zuh wrote

It sounds like a good idea in one's imagination, but several problems could arise, like being able to supply the city properly. Also, how would they deal with properly discarding trash, refuse, and human waste generated by its residents, and how would they stop them from throwing litter into the ocean? These issues need to be addressed before such a thing is built.

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OXMWEPW t1_j6z2ban wrote

If the price of real estate rises enough, it could be viable.

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isleepinahammock t1_j6vx84k wrote

Can it be a city floating in the sky? If you haven't heard of the concept, let me introduce you to the late, great, Buckminster Fuller's Cloud 9 concept.

Geodesic domes are one of the few structural forms that gets proportionally stronger the larger it gets. Which means that, in principle, you can build geodesic domes of massive size. You could in principle build geodesic domes across entire metropolitan areas if you wanted to.

But an interesting thing happens if you make them big enough, as Buckminster Fuller realized. If you have a geodesic sphere a half a mile in diameter, the air inside it weighs about thousand times more than the geodesic sphere enclosing that air.

And this means, if you heat the air in such a sphere the slightest bit warmer than the air inside, that sphere will experience a colossal buoyant force. You could build a city in such a sphere and it would heat itself. Just the body heat of the people living there plus the heat output of all their machines and the heat used to heat and cool homes would be more than enough to raise the temperature of the entire sphere to the point where the city could float.

In other words, such a city would be a giant hot air balloon; except it wouldn't even need a burner, the waste heat of its inhabitants would keep it constantly warm enough to make the whole city float.

I love this concept because flying cities are one of those things casually thrown into a scifi setting to indicate an impossibly advanced civilization. Just throw a floating city on screen, and you know that civilization must have some sort of anti-gravity technology. They're capable of doing things that are so far beyond us they might as well be magic. We have no more idea how to create anti-gravity than we know how to be a literal magical wizard.

But it turns out, we actually could make flying cities today if we wanted. We don't have anti-gravity, but if enough raw buoyant force, you can lift an entire city. If we wanted to, we could have a world where we look up at the sky and see an entire city lazily bobbing about, slowly drifting on the wind, gradually passing over you and floating off over the horizon.

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chemprofes t1_j6w1zrf wrote

It is all a scam. People think living by the waterfront at the heart of the city is desirable. People think that rising see do not mean we actually need to re-think how we live near oceans. However, those same people dismiss the ideas of simple things like what happens if big wave hits? What happens to freshwater and electricity and internet lines in a storm or emergency? How are you going to install sewer lines and protect them against sea life attaching to them.

Can you live like this in a protected wetland area with minimal wave actions and modifications...yeah but not anywhere near open water.

This is all based on the idea of things get bad in the next 100 years no problem we will just moved. It is not that simple. Maintenance going to be more of a problem not less of a problem in the future.

For evidence see the manmade islands by the UEA....right now they are all but abandon and that only took 10 years.

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StarChild413 t1_j6wc6jo wrote

Before I clicked on the title/looked at the description I didn't think this was the water kind of floating city but more the (in terms of actual setup not regressed social values as that was a period piece this is from) Columbia from Bioshock Infinite kind

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egeswender t1_j6wppzu wrote

Only if it's on Venus. That is the easiest path to solar system colonization. Especially compared to Terra forming mars.

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Nunyabiz8107 t1_j6xmeb5 wrote

If it was an actual city that was governed by, for, and of its citizens, you know, like actual organic cities, then yeah, maybe. What this sounds like is an aquatic company town. Great for the wealthy executives, but horrible for the workers. Oceanix, or whatever they are, would basically own you in what is essentially only a step or two up from chattel slavery. Since the city would most likely be in international waters, the company would not have to follow any labor laws, which means no worker safety, no workers' rights, no unions, and you would get paid in company script and not actual money, if you even get paid at all. The whole thing is intentionally set up for maximum exploitation, so no thanks. Truly dystopian.

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Iron_Baron t1_j6y7wqk wrote

No. Humans have never built something that can't sink and never will. Especially when these projects are inevitably plagued by corruption, lowest bidder construction quality, human error, consistent underestimating of the impacts of climate and weather, etc.

Rogue waves, super typhoons, tsunamis, pirates, terrorists, wars, etc. exist already. There's no telling what kind of frequency and/or intensity increases we'll see as the climate and seas change, driving natural disasters and human desperation to new heights.

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JeremiahBoogle t1_j70ak1h wrote

>Rogue waves, super typhoons, tsunamis, pirates, terrorists, wars, etc. exist already. There's no telling what kind of frequency and/or intensity increases we'll see as the climate and seas change, driving natural disasters and human desperation to new heights.

That's just a collection of words with no thought about how they apply to this subject.

I actually agree that a floating city is a bad idea compared to living on land, but a lot of what you've listed is highly locational. Super typhoons only appear in certain parts of the world, rogue waves only occur out in exposed waters, tsunamis aren't even dangerous until they almost hit land and the wave starts to build. Pirates, terrorists and wars are just generic and can occur anywhere.

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Iron_Baron t1_j70khpw wrote

Thanks for starting off with an insult, when it's your reading comprehension and subject knowledge that's at issue. I'll elaborate for you:

The future will undoubtedly continue toward increasing scarcity of resources among the majority of the world's population. The uber rich will hoard wealth and power, as automation drives down wage growth and job opportunities for large swathes of humanity, even in the developed world.

Zero nations have a game plan for what to do with their economy, as AI and robotics take every job from surgery to coding and repairing themselves. This will lead to increased civil and economic unrest, necessitating increased authoritarianism, as those in power decline to relinquish it, without being forced.

Simultaneously, climate change and technological advancements will increase conflict over finite sources of potable water, arable land, dwelling space within human temperature limits, rare earth metals, etc. The collapse of the oceanic food web due to rising temperature, acidification, and disruption of gyre currents like the Gulf Stream due to lowered ocean salinity, will destroy a significant portion of humanity's sustenance.

All of these effects will lead to increased exploitation of workers, especially minorities and immigrants, as societies become more insular in the face of dwindling access to habitable space, wealth, water, education, etc. This means an increase in terrorism, wars, corporate espionage, ethnic conflicts, revolutions, etc. Now couple everything I've just said with the typical issues of corruption in municipal development, engineering mistakes, human hubris (such as building "The Line" or "The World" archipelago), etc.

That paints a very unsafe picture for human existence. Placing humans in floating cities, which could be shore anchored or deep sea, invites all of the above calamities to impact that city, to an extent much greater than land bound or especially land locked cities. Floating cities are likely to be good candidates for bases of petroleum extraction, desalination, and aquaponic food production. That paints a giant target on that city when it comes to human conflict.

The hypothetical possibility of destroying a floating city utterly is far greater than for a traditional land based city. Making floating cities then prime targets for terrorism and first strikes by nuclear or conventional forces, not to mention pirates and insurgents. Additionally floating cities would be far easier for attacking forces to reach (you can't drive a boat to attack Denver).

Coastal cities have always been more vulnerable to attack for all of recorded history. This flaw would expand with floating cities, as they could be attacked from literally 720 degrees. Depending on the location of the city, it would be as vulnerable (likely more so) to damage from natural disasters, like the ones I mentioned in previous comment, as traditional coastal cities. A near shore city is highly vulnerable to typhoons (or hurricanes) which cover the majority of the world's oceans, in the prime human habitable latitudes. Even deep sea cities would be at risk from super storms, that will become increasingly common.

They are also more vulnerable to tsunami, as they couldn't be anchored in bedrock to the same extent a traditional city could. They would fare even worse than the cities we've built on dredged "reclaimed" shorelines. Likewise they are vulnerable to rogue waves, should they be open water or shore impacting. You need to learn more about rogue waves if you think they only occur on open ocean. One sank the Edmund Fitzgerald on a Great Lake, for example, and rogue waves can absolutely hit shorelines.

All of the climate and human based calamities I listed will be exacerbated by the factors I mentioned. On top of that, add the terrible job maintaining municipal infrastructure we already do as a species, which would be even worse when moved to a maritime environment. Now, maybe you understand why I said I would not live on a floating city. Or, perhaps you'd like to insult me again. Luckily, I do not care, either way, and am done with this conversation. Good bye.

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JeremiahBoogle t1_j70srny wrote

>They are also more vulnerable to tsunami, as they couldn't be anchored in bedrock to the same extent a traditional city could. They would fare even worse than the cities we've built on dredged "reclaimed" shorelines. Likewise they are vulnerable to rogue waves, should they be open water or shore impacting. You need to learn more about rogue waves if you think they only occur on open ocean. One sank the Edmund Fitzgerald on a Great Lake, for example, and rogue waves can absolutely hit shorelines.

I can promise you that after spending a good majority of my career working at Sea & most my life around boats, I can probably speak with greater authority on rogue waves or waves in general more than yourself.

The danger that rogue waves pose to ships is in general is the risk of a capsize or in truly bad cases, a pitch pole.

A rule of thumb being that any breaking wave higher than the beam of the vessel is enough to risk a capsize.

In reality for something like a floating city that will be extremely large, even compared to todays ships, the risk of capsize will be non existent.

These cities would be so large in relation to the waves that they would pose no risk of that kind, actually I would say the greatest risk would be to fatigue of such a large structure due to the constant bending and torsional forces over a long time. But I'm not designing it, and presumably they would build it somewhere sheltered.

Lake superior does not count as sheltered by the way, its classed as a 'lake' because its landlocked, but due to its size it might as well be a sea.

Again, tsunamis. A tsunami is dangerous when it hits the shore, go and look at videos & you can see various vessels at anchorage just off the coast being barely impacted by them, at sea they are not even noticeable, its only when the reach land that the wave builds to a dangerous height & breaks.

And I actually agreed with you that a floating city is a bad idea compared to living on land, harder to maintain, scant available resources, hard to build. They are a science fiction idea & even if built will still be reliant on land support.

I just disagreed with some of your reasoning.

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Side-eyed-smile t1_j6yori8 wrote

Considering I won't go on a cruise because it's too far from shore to swim back, that would be a No.

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SciFiSoldier_481 t1_j6ywncw wrote

I just don't want to live in a city period. I'd prefer to have my own land, grow my own crops, and raise my own livestock. Nothing industrial, just enough for my family. And I prefer not to live so close to my neighbor that I can throw a rock and hit their house. I don't like the idea of living on top of one another, stacked up like product on a shelf, and having to deal with everyone else's habits and life styles while listening to people complain about mine. I just want to be left in peace and not be a drain on society and the environment. As a trucker, I took a lot of products from all over the country into cities.... and I often took nothing out. Sometimes, it feels like cities are just a drain on resources. But what do you all think? Give me your own thoughts.

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AVBforPrez t1_j73wmud wrote

My dumb ass was like "how is it going to stay in the air?"

Need to take a break and go for a walk, jesus

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Elmore420 t1_j6v6hyt wrote

I’ve been living on boats for most of the last 40 years, currently a 133 year old one, so it wouldn’t be out of the picture, it just depends on the society in the city.

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RukushaRum t1_j6wp8yv wrote

I am not against the concept but having seen how we manage and maintain infrastructure and how crap we are at predicting how infrastructure will function in sea water. I will just watch from the side lines on this one

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oms-law t1_j6ww5y9 wrote

I would definitely want to feel the experience of a floating city. I have seen utopian pictures of cities that float and I know in reality it's quite different. But, yeah given the opportunity I'd definitely get an apartment (or whatever it's called) in a floating city. But then again it comes down to one unchangeable fact-that I am broke and I most probably won't be able to afford it.

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EmpireStrikes1st t1_j6x1z2a wrote

If the reason the city is floating is because the ice caps have melted and the Earth has been flooded... I'm gonna take a hard pass on that one.

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Snaz5 t1_j6xkwrr wrote

sure why not. the issue is that every plan to do so so far has just been scammers fishing for gullible rich investors.

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RiverDragon64 t1_j6xzzza wrote

I was in the Navy for 22+ years & lived on an LHA for 3 years. Not really interested.

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bigedthebad t1_j6y0f4g wrote

Nope. There is just too much that can go wrong, especially with new tech.

Maybe in 100 years once they have sunk a few and figured out how to fix it.

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NeadNathair t1_j6zni73 wrote

Now that we're only a decade or so away from climate change induced superstores, I think building massive generational "city ships" on the ocean is an excellent idea.

Largely because I don't like people.

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krautastic t1_j702rj1 wrote

First? There's some people floating in Lake Titicaca that would beg to differ.

And no, I probably wouldn't, but I might visit. Island costs are always so high and I imagine I'd get bored constrained to a small area like that. Also, potential for sea sickness in my home if a storm rolls in? Seems like a solution for overcrowded areas or overcrowded wallets, neither of which are problems I have 😆

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johnmatrix84 t1_j70oxc5 wrote

I don't want to live in a city, floating or land-based.

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Bossanova87 t1_j71zkjv wrote

Aren't we all technically already living in giant floating cities? How is this much different than Asia making "new" islands?

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Arcologycrab t1_j7347rv wrote

I’d live in a Seastead but only one that was supposed to be like, a floating airport or something so that my roommate isn’t something like cryptoboss57 who says Elon Musk is the lord of all intellectuals and is sad that cryptoland failed

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