 15 Mar 2005 @ 20:50, by Tlingel
What if you lived on an itinerant floating city?
What then?
What would your address be?
Slowly cruising the world, hugging the shoreline, and completing one revolution every 3 years, such a ship would house residential space, a library, schools, and a first-class hospital, in addition to retail and wholesale shops, offices, warehouses, and light manufacturing and assembly enterprises...
A fleet of commuter aircraft and hydrofoils would take care of ferrying residents and visitors to and from shore.
There have been talks here and there about this as early as 1998 when an article about it was first published in Popular Mechanics. Many more have been written since then. Not much has been happening however, and the organizers of the would be project do not seem that well organized. It all just seem like a lot of pipe dreams, at this point, and I doubt there is much of anything there other than the half-baked conceptual idea on which the project was launched.
Still, the idea is there. There is something about this. The kind of thing that sends the mind roaming or leave it floating at sea. It all depends on what happens next, I suppose. And, it is not so much the technological and financial demands of such a project (an estimated $11 billion - gasp) that fascinates, but what lays beyond it and the implications for the inhabitants of such a floating city and its place in the world as a community. Building a behemoth of a ship is, no doubt, a daunting task but creating a vibrant community is even harder, as anyone who has ever been involved with community building will tell you.
|
|
