Floating Cities Aren’t The Answer To Climate Change

Houseboat rafts fish farming in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam
A floating village in Vietnam

CITYLAB is a brilliant website that explores innovation and change, which may contribute to the success of tomorrow’s cities. It is no stranger to the word ‘could’ and often applies it to farsighted ideas that range from sweeping to mundane:

•   Place-Based Immigrant Visas Could Spur U.S. Growth
•   The Long Lines for Women’s Bathrooms Could Be Eliminated
•   How a Monthly IRS Tax Refund Could Pay Your Rent
. . . and on an on.

Somewhat surprising then to encounter the imaginative (albeit pie-in-the-sky) notion of a floating city being greeted with such a firm CITYLAB head shake — one we have reproduced as the headline on this post — not as a ‘could’ but as an ‘is not’ story.

True, it’s patently obvious that a floating city cannot offer much in the way of climate change support to say, La Paz, Bolivia, the highest capital city in South America. It’s also true that while climate change would appear to offer all manner of threats to cities, those away from lowlands or coastal areas may never need to deal with long term water inundation.

As to the practicality of water-based communities, they already exist in various forms, as does waterborne ‘countryside’ in the form of floating farms.

So we’ll lead off with a non-CITYLAB story on the subject, one of those ‘could’ approaches to future change. It reflects a recent United Nations conference. Read more in the Huffington Post: This Sci-Fi Plan To Beat Rising Seas Could Change The Way We Live – If It Works

However, having introduced the issue in a wishful thinking form, we can highly recommend the thoughtfulness of the article that leads with a firm head shake. Read more in CITYLAB: Floating Cities Aren’t The Answer To Climate Change

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