Floating cities of the future

Already a few years ago some people spoke about the so called Freedom Ship. It is a concept which would result the world's first and largest mobile floating city. The ideas where crazy but could be realized. A ship flat-bottomed with glass and concrete, 340ft high, capable of housing 60,000 people. The floating city could be reached by several aeroplane runways topped on the boat. On the Freedom ship there are schools, hospitals, light industries, shops, restaurants and 200 acres of open space. The idea became popular and by 2002, more then 3,000 families and businesses had signed up to live and work on it. But the ship still isn't there and it is still a future dream. But a realistic and possible one. The idea for the Freedom Ship is now being slowed down for realisation because of a lack of money.

It will follow the sun - it will be better than a land-based city Norman Nixon
)

But the idea of floating cities is gaining popularity allthough the idea isn't new. There is already spoken about these kind of mobile cities in the early 1960. To be precise it was in 1964 when British architect Ron Herron talked and wrote about the walking city concept. But maybe the concept of colonising the seas is good from the view of environment? Especially for us Dutch living for a big part underneath the sealevel floating cities could be a realistic view on the future. Some other visionairs also believe that we could face a world where we humans need floating cities. One of them is Vincent Callebaut with his project Lilypad. A project which great similarity knows whith the project from the Danish architect, Julien de Smedt.

The idea of colonalising the ocean is old and we have seen it in many futuristic movies. Still we do not know a floating city in 2008. Allthough we know floating house and we are able to build island the floating city is something for the future. But todays problems with environments might cause us humans to build a floating city and us water as ground to build upon in the near future. I thing it will take quite a lot of years but finally we will see the rise of the floating city. But after the year 2030! What do you think?

More information: see The Guardian
Source Photos: Vincent Callebaut