San Francisco’s Seasteading Institute is looking to the world’s oceans for both inspiration and solutions: could floating cities become areas of potentially self-governed technological and scientific exploration while also acting as a viable solution to the ever-growing problem of over-population? As it stands (or should we say, floats) now, the first step towards this concept will be a small one; a coastal community built in the waters of French Polynesia with 300 inhabitants, with a tentative move-in date of 2020.
The non-profit Seasteading Institute has spent almost a decade wishing Waterworld had never been made in its quest to sell the idea of what it calls a “special economic seazone”, as far as it pertains to the current French Polynesia project. If things go as planned, the Seasteading Institute is heralding a future that will have thousands of floating ocean communities and cities by 2050.
Story by Jay Moon
