The city, now known as the “Maldives Floating City”, is a joint venture between the Maldivian government and real estate developer Dutch Docklands. “A floating city should look just like normal cities. So with sandy streets, beautiful, colorful houses. But if you look down the city, it floats,” said Koen Olthuis, architect and founder of Waterstudio, the architectural firm he designed. the city. “It means the whole city can move up and down [tides] and with extreme floods and rising sea levels. “But it will not be different from a normal city,” he told guest host Tom Harrington at As It Happens. Young men swimming at sunset by quadrupeds on November 6, 2016 in Male, Maldives. Located in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives is the country with the lowest altitude in the world, with nowhere more than 2 meters above sea level and more than 80 percent of their scattered islands less than 1 meter above from the sea surface. (Aishath Adam / Getty Images) The city will include a combination of budget housing as well as superior quality housing, in addition to restaurants, hotels and shops. Prices for homes will range from US $ 150,000 ($ 194,000 Cdn) for a studio apartment to US $ 250,000 ($ 323,000 Cdn) for family homes. A total of 5,000 housing units are planned, with a capacity of 20,000 people as soon as construction is completed sometime in 2027. The Maldives and the Dutch Docklands are to unveil their first completed units in the coming weeks, with people starting to move in 2024. Rising sea levels, accelerated by climate change, pose a particularly formidable threat to the Maldives, which is made up of more than 1,100 islands, many of which are just one meter above sea level. According to National Geographic, some experts fear that it may become the first nation on the planet to disappear completely under sea water. Houses, restaurants and other buildings are designed to be arranged in a hexagonal design that looks like a brain coral. (Dutch Docklands)
The city of brain corals
The concept art so far depicts houses with bright colors sitting in calm waters. A view from above shows a network of buildings and water canals, arranged in designs that look like brain corals. The design comes from “the goal of living with nature and leaning towards improving and respecting natural corals… leading to new knowledge emphasizing the Maldives’ responsibility as a center for coral conservation in the world,” says one explanation on the project promotion website. As Olthuis explains, much of the Maldives is surrounded by coral reefs, some of which will help protect the 200-hectare floating city from the worst storms and other extreme weather conditions the Indian Ocean has to offer. A total of 5,000 homes have been planned, with a capacity of 20,000 people as soon as construction is completed sometime in 2027. (Dutch Docklands) The capital of the Maldives Male is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with a population of over 200,000 people on an island about eight square kilometers. Olthuis said the floating city could be considered an extension of Male himself because of its proximity, allowing residents access to existing infrastructure such as schools and healthcare.
Possible living solutions for the whole world
This is not the only time a floating city has been proposed as an immediate response to rising sea levels. The South Korean city of Busan announced in December that it was working on a prototype for Oceanix, a similar city that would be expanded offshore of the shipping city of Busan. The Busan government announced that it was a joint project with UN-Habitat, the United Nations agency for urban and sustainable development. Olthuis said the project for the Maldives has been underway for almost 10 years and that the design and design work done so far in the Maldives city could be applied to similar projects in other coastal communities around the world that are threatened by sea level rise. “If you look at Miami, New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, they all have the same problems: lack of space, threat of sea level,” he said. “They have to make the transition from the battle against water, to life with water.” Written by Jonathan Ore Interview with Koen Olthuis produced by Morgan Passi.
