Floating to the Frontier of Architecture Innovation
Floating to the Frontier of Architecture Innovation
How floatable architecture and communities will change the future of life in mega-cities as we know it
Welcome back to The Innovation Armory! Today’s piece is on the the new development of floating cities / communities to offload population growth and fortify against the impacts of global warming of megacities. Read on for more about:
The scale of global population displacement from rising sea levels and simultaneous investment needed
In which situations, cities ought to build new floating developments vs. retrofit existing infrastructure
The sustainability and social justice advantages of floating communities specifically in natural harmony, population displacement, regeneration, open source scaling and equitism
Why floating cities may provision public resources better than land-based megacities due to their advantages in security, built-in- jobs, leisure, energy and water & sanitation
The escape hatch offered by floating cities in the fight against global warming
The impact floating architecture could have on the proliferation of network states and levels of geopolitical conflict
Why we ought to consider relocating data centers, critical power infrastructure and manufacturing plants onto the ocean
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Infrastructure Upgrades
Megacities across the globe are highly vulnerable to the impact of rising sea levels. In the US, Miami, New Orleans and New York are particularly susceptible with both Miami and New York already commencing substantial initiatives to curb potential impact. The below graphic shows the magnitude of populations at risk in mega-cities across the globe:
In New York, there are already 30,000 properties at risk of damage from rising sea levels and the city is already considering drastic measures to protect against storm surges, like a plan to add 1,760 acres of land artificially to Manhattan. Miami has already announced plans to raise municipal roads, power plants and homes to spare them from the effects of sea rise. Miami and New York are taking the approach of retro-fitting existing cities with changes that will help adapt to climate change. There are other cities that are tackling the problem through more of a growth mindset that prioritizes the expansion of megacities into new terrains that are environmentally friendly and wholly avert the impacts of climate change. This novel approach is namely through the use of creating new floating communities on the ocean that rise and fall with the ebb and flow of the ocean. There exists precedent for ocean housing particularly in expensive US cities such as Seattle where folks will live on floating houses / docked boats. The difference between these two approaches is akin to the water park tourist who chooses to spend his day lounging on the lazy river ride rather than speeding down the high speed vortex slide. Creating new floating communities is slower but allows for smoother sailing, and stronger/more sustainable infrastructure once construction is complete, whereas retrofitting existing architecture to survive sea level rise is faster and more dangerous given legacy and incumbent architectural constraints:
Among the initial cities / countries that are planning to build floating components to their cities are Busan (South Korea) and The Maldives. Busan has 3.4 million residents that are at significant risk of feeling the impact of rising sea level and the Maldives is at risk of being totally swallowed by the sea given its unique constellation of low-lying islands that comprise the territory. The choice to retrofit existing cities vs. build new floating ocean cities is dependent on a couple of factors: First, the relative level of disruption from climate change and the pace of the impact are not evenly distributed. Where the formers are significant and quick, it makes more sense to offload the most critically endangered population areas onto new floating cities as the retrofitting “band-aid” solution will be more likely to lose effectiveness sooner. Further, the nascence of existing infrastructure certainly plays a role in how easily the buildings can be moved. Buildings that were constructed more recently with flexible and/or modular foundations may be able to be moved or lifted more easily, which lends itself towards a retro-fitting model. There is precedent for moving entire buildings that are more modern to entirely different areas in a relatively cost efficient manner, such as the way this building in China was moved recently:
Going forward, new construction projects in megacities ought to be built with more consideration of the possibility that buildings may need to be moved in the future. This will help make existing urban plans more flexible and dynamic in their ability to adapt to rapidly changing environmental and sea rise conditions.
The prototypes are under construction for both of the Busan and Maldives projects and their schematics are spectacular:
Oceanix is leading the charge from a private market perspective in building the initial prototypes of these settlements generally through public-private partnerships with municipalities. For their builds, they are taking less of a retail perspective to buildouts and instead focusing on lodging, living and commercial research, which create a virtuous cycle of attracting more visitors, capital and tourism to the islands.
See below a link to an animated rendering of their first construction in Busan specifically:
These floating cities have numerous potential benefits relative to traditional mega-cities specifically within a sustainability framework and at the very least their construction is complementary to the simultaneous expansion of traditional on-land mega-cities:
Harmony with Nature - Floating cities place human communities in the middle of nature to create harmony between natural forces and structures. Historically, the world has created mega-cities and expanded industry by trailblazing nature (clearing trees, rainforests, polluting water). The floating islands are meant to be self-sustaining and allow for significant population expansion in mega-cities without destroying more of the limited resources we have on land. I think it is interesting to consider granting residential spaces on these islands to indigenous communities that were displaced from mega-cities and whose reservations ended up being far away from their initial ancestral homes due to urban sprawl.
Population Displacement - As more populations are placed in jeopardy in mega-cities by rising sea levels, floating islands will serve as resettlement areas for affected homes and communities. Besides resettlement triggered by rising sea levels, there are increasingly resettlement projects being undertaken to be able to mine rare minerals and resources. For example, the Swedish government is currently undergoing one of the largest instances of eminent domain in Kiruna whereby they are repossessing and resettling an entire community to be able to go forth with mining operations in the region.
Regeneration - designers are excited about identifying ways that the floating islands can actually be helpful in regenerating ocean communities. One such a way is through the use of BioRock materials which are proven to help protect, grow and repopulate coral reefs. Coral reefs are critical to maintaining local fish ecosystems, provide natural protection against storm surges on coastlines and are critical to biodiversity.
Open Source City Construction - New floating islands are being built with state-of-the-art technology that allows for the monitoring of island stability and detectable movements based on water current. Because the community is in the middle of a dynamic ocean environment, it is increasingly important to have sufficient monitoring and analytics to ensure the safety and stability of the islands. The monitors and radars that will be used in monitoring island stability can be used to monitor and benchmark regeneration initiatives, waste disposal and other sustainability initiatives through smart city-like infrastructure. When new construction projects are traditionally undertaken, much of the permitting, environmental reports, etc. are a private black box. Developers like Oceanix are increasingly using sustainability analytics to open source the impact that their projects are having on the ecosystem in a public way. This is key to enable more transparency and tracking of the environmental success of the initiative.
Equitism - Because the self-sustainable, self-contained style of living on these islands will be distinct from surrounding mega-cities, there may be a need to incentivize researchers in particular and human capital to make the permanent move to the islands. There is an interesting opportunity to apply the framework of “equitism” in incentivizing community population through giving partial ownership of the city and its infrastructure to new residents. Particularly if residents contribute in different ways to the self-sustenance of the communal ecosystem, ownership could be awarded based on unique abilities individuals bring to the table. Ownership could also be awarded to individuals relocating from inner-city areas to provide economic upward mobility to individuals that may have been locked out of traditional home ownership in megacity markets, which is historically a key indicator of upward mobility potential.
Iterating on Megacity Provisions
Beyond a sustainability framework, when you consider the other public goods provisions that megacities afford to their residents, floating islands have an opportunity to outpace traditional megacities in terms of innovation and competition.
I offer below a framework of the key provisions land-based cities offer – floating cities have the potential to disrupt and win in all categories long-term:
Security & Defense - floating cities are naturally insulated from much of the crime that would exist within the city center of its adjacent land-based megacity by virtue of the fact that it is floating on the water. If there are defense issues, these cities are actually movable and could be relocated in the event of an unexpected natural disaster or in anticipation of one. Lastly, because these cities consist of smaller, micro islands that are linked together, safety and security issues can be more easily contained by simply detaching or locking down one individual micro-island, which is much easier than containing a security situation in a land-based neighborhood which is more sprawling.
Jobs & Services - these cities are aiming to create self-contained and self-sustaining economies that tap into natural resources for energy, for food (from fishing in the ocean), etc. and there will be lots of government sponsored jobs needed to run these self-sustaining areas of the economy. Furthermore, particularly the first couple of prototypes will see booming tourism as they exist on the cutting edge of architectural innovation and that tourism economy will create ample opportunity for local jobs. The research pillar of Oceanix’s model is a critical component to providing academic jobs on each of their superstructures.
Leisure - these floating cities will ban vehicles, cars, trucks and gas-powered machinery, which will i) create a cleaner, more pedestrian friendly ambience and ii) open up more space for creative and interesting public spaces. These public spaces that are pedestrian friendly will prioritize individuals over industrial activity and make these cities much more livable from a leisure perspective. Further, given the islands are placed out on the water, there are ample opportunities to create unique nightlife, restaurant and bar experiences that will attract younger crowds of people.
Energy - These floating cities will incentivize the propagation of unique forms of renewable energy particularly in the realm of wave, wind and solar. Buoys that capture wave energy can harvest natural energy in the ocean to power much of the islands. Further, overall wind levels and wind speeds are higher out on the ocean and so there is greater opportunity for stronger wind turbine generation. Lastly, because there will be no industrial infrastructure or skyscrapers on the water to “crowd out” sun rays, solar panels will also likely be a key contributor to the total energy portfolio. Across all of these energy methods, the portfolio of island energy has the ability to be wholly energy independent.
Water & Sanitation - Oceanix and other developers plan to equip their islands with de-salination technologies that will allow for saltwater to be seamlessly converted into fresh water. The islands are being designed to be zero food waste, leveraging sustainable fishing methods for much of the food generation that will offload process waste into closed loop vertical farming structures to grow agricultural products. The de-salination and sanitation processes will be actively involved in generating more economic output for the islands, whereas traditional methods for land-based cities tend to be more reactionary.
Part of why billionaires like Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos are growing and funding such significant space exploration initiatives is so that they believe inter-planetary colonization is a critical escape hatch that we have from earth in the event that global warming makes the earth intolerable to live on. I believe investing in floating islands, while it only addresses the sea level habitability question, is a more cost effective and moral “escape hatch” that doesn’t require giving up on our planet that has provided sustenance throughout all of human history:
From a geopolitical perspective, there is an interesting opportunity to leverage floating islands to alleviate conflict and enable marginalized groups to form self-governing collectives. Individual states / territories can become recognized as countries on a stated basis (via declaration by UN member states) or de facto, based on whether other nation-states are open to forming treaties with that country. Balaji Srinavasan has written about the concept of a network state, effectively the idea that distributed populations can: i) form community online, ii) create a corresponding cryptocurrency that serves as a treasury for monetary transactions and iii) pool resources to buy land and effectively create distributed digital formed states. While tools exist for (i) and (ii), it is theoretically easier to gain recognition (stated or de facto) as a new state if your state exists on land that no nation-state entities have laid claim to yet. The issue is that effectively all land in the world is owned by an existing nation-state, but oceans don’t have the same ownership issue. Marginalized groups that exist under the sovereign rule of other nations and even climate refugees could be relocated to new nation-states that exist in an ownership free landzone today on the ocean under the supervision and approval of the UN or international bodies. While these architectural innovations do have the potential to drive forward the proliferation of network states, I believe they are more likely to exacerbate existing geopolitical conflicts as today’s nation-states: i) have the most resources to build these sorts of initiatives and ii) will race to claim as much ocean ownership as they can to protect and expand their borders at sea.
Besides domestic cities, there are numerous other opportunities to relocate assets to these sorts of floating structures that could: i) free up limited land on earth and ii) create select efficiency advantages depending on the asset at hand. The major issue with relocating traditional assets is that the cost to service them definitely rises substantially, but this can be mitigated by keeping them still relatively proximate to shore or upgrading ships or drones to include service capabilities. The three major areas where I see potential are data centers, critical power infrastructure and manufacturing plants:
Data centers take up so much space on land and given the nature of the cloud computing revolution, there is not a need for them to be proximate to users on land as long as they have internet connectivity. Data centers have a significant hidden cost in terms of water usage, with Google’s data centers using billions of gallons of fresh water every year to cool their servers. If data centers were relocated to floating islands on the ocean, then the natural ocean water could be used to cool their servers. In addition, we could leverage natural power resources out at sea like wave power technology and wind turbines to reduce the carbon footprint of data centers, which account for around 2% of total carbon emissions. Data center networks are built around the concept of redundancy such that there are multiple servers hosting the same information to ensure there is not a single point of failure in the system. In particular, redundant computing resources have no need to be proximate to their users and could be moved out to sea.
Much of our critical power infrastructure is already coastal and is substantially at-risk in the environment of natural disasters triggered by climate change. Oceanix is designing its islands to be category five hurricane proof and tsunami proof so that structures can undulate with the water and also be closed off to damaging natural forces. Moving some of our existing critical power infrastructure offshore under a similar structure could counter-intuitively help them withstand natural disasters better if their structures are built in harmony with the ocean. Power infrastructure is a situation where retrofitting and relocating existing power systems may make more sense than building new floating plants from a cost perspective. The primary issue under this scheme is that while power generation could be i) better protected and ii) could tap better into wave and wind power, the power transmission, the further we are from land becomes more costly and problematic. This is not an issue in the event that the power is serving a self-contained floating island because in that event the power resource is proximate to the consumption end user.
Manufacturing plants, while they are substantial carbon emitters, could be placed in strategic areas on the ocean to minimize impact like placing them around naturally carbon sequestering seagrass or mangrove habitats. There is even an opportunity to use carbon injection technology to sequester carbon that is emitted from plants but spread its impact to lower ocean depths and spare surface level aquatic life and habitats. Many manufacturing plants have similar cooling needs for certain pieces (similar to data center assets) and could benefit from immediate access to ocean water for cooling purposes. Placing manufacturing plants out on the ocean could have an interesting efficiency impact on the supply chain by cutting out intermodal trucking and train routes that are necessary to get goods from traditionally in-land manufacturing plants. Ships could dock at port and pick up finished goods products from plants directly out on the water. The constraints to this model include significant supply issues the further plants are out into the ocean and also issues transporting labor for non-automated plants. One area of manufacturing in particular, the metalcasting and metallurgy of rare earth metals could benefit from being placed out into the ocean where deep sea deposits are actually found so that the metals can be processed at the point of origin and then picked up along shipping routes. Cobalt, manganese, nickel and copper are some of the rare earth metals that can be found at ocean depths that could be simultaneously harvested and processed on the same floating platform.
Out of all of these opportunities, data centers represent the best opportunity to both streamline environmental impact and cost efficiency. If this were a real life Monty Hall problem, I would certainly stick with door B:
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