And tsunamis
And here liberals were worried sbout Guam tipping over.
Water World!
I think having a city on the bottom of the ocean is even better. Out in the Atlantic and under a lighthouse.
....barnacles...rust..fungus....rogue waves..high winds..heavy rains..seagull poop...mercury poisoning...salt water corrosion..contagious infections ...and then typical human destructive behaviour always follows....the next mystery novel will follow asking why were all these dead people found in this seasteading structure?
Also you can only have so many military troops on one side of the island. The Georgia congressman was just in early.
Disappointing - I thought they meant floating in the sky. :)
Very dumb idea. The sea is not our natural environment. The land is. Putting people on water is not smart.
Where does the waste go? Into the water? That would be dumb. If it is brought back to land, then they are still dependent on the land, and have done something stupid in going to live on the water.
But this is the nytimes, a rag that lives in one fantasy world after another.
WTF? Two ridiculously false assertions before the NYT writer even gets into details.
Noticing the words “academics, government & San Francisco” in the first few sentences was enough to know this is another lib fantasy where they get to spend other peoples money.
1) Where does the drinking/bathing water come from?
2) Where does the poop go?
I know ‘other things’ that float as well...............
A boondoggle as big as solar and wind power put together.
Someone needs to go watch “Waterworld” another time.
I’ve been casually enthralled by such projects since http://oceania.org - building a new nation on artificial land is an attractive concept*.
Unfortunately, cost of living is surprisingly high in such places - made apparent by the grinding poverty occupying most natural islands of comparable size. It would require a “Galt’s Gulch” scale effort by the very wealthy & hyper productive to make work for any meaningful period.
Those contemplating such efforts might do well to consider something far cheaper and easier to access: one can easily find land “out West” at $1000/acre; that’s a whole lot cheaper than the $1000/_foot_ you’d be looking at to build & occupy a viable floating city.
There’s also places like China’s “ghost cities” where entire literal cities have actually been built, with practically nobody living in them. Would be a whole lot easier & cheaper to just arrange occupancy there, than to build it yourself starting with making the very ground to build upon.
But then again, I’ve noticed there’s good money in proposing “mega projects” - not necessarily actually building them (though that’s a great bonus if you can pull it off), but pitching a good proposal to the ultra-rich can get you enough $$$ for a small team for a few years to research the possibility and make impressive presentations to your patron’s swimming-in-wealth friends.
To wit: they’re neat, but I don’t see “floating cities” happening. There’s too many cheaper & more practical options available.
* - much later I discovered that the US military built & occupied an artificial island. The nearby political shift some years later resulted in failure to continue regional recognition of its ownership/independence, resulting it in being shelled and the occupants vacating. The artificial island was eventually retaken by its original builders, but at a staggeringly high human cost.
Some of the same folks who see this possibility are among those who deny that we humans can adapt to “climate change” (”rising sea levels”).