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Engineers Propose Lily Pad-Like Floating Cities

Posted by samzenpus on from the city-of-frogs dept.

Zothecula writes "The idea of going offshore to satisfy our renewable energy needs isn't new, but the grand vision of Japan's Shimizu Corporation goes way beyond harnessing green energy at sea for use in cities on Terra firma — it takes the whole city along for the ride. The company, along with the Super Collaborative Graduate School and Nomura Securities, is researching the technical issues involved in constructing its Green Float concept — a self-sufficient, carbon-negative floating city that would reside in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean."

21 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. The technical issues by girlintraining · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The technical issues: Hurricanes, typhoons, rogue waves, tropical storms... Even if you make your lilies float, what's on top could still be blown over, and how many people want to live with an ocean view that turns dark and deadly every couple years? Oh... wait... New Orleans. Nevermind. The lemmings will pay plenty to drown in the ocean.

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    1. Re:The technical issues by mcgrew · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It explained the lack of typhoons, but a lot of TFA doesn't make sense at all.

      The concept would comprise individual floating cells or districts resembling water lilies with a radius of 1km (0.62 miles) that would form a compact village that could house 10,000 to 50,000 people

      The Japanese may go for that population density, but it's not for me. The city I live in is 100k people and it must be twenty times that area, and it's too densly populated for my tastes.

      The central tower would be surrounded by grassland and forests

      Huh???? In a half mile area? WTF?

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    2. Re:The technical issues by girlintraining · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Hey...it only rarely happens...

      So do massive oil spills from deep sea drilling. How do you feel about legislation to stop that from happening again, Mr. New Orleans?

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    3. Re:The technical issues by Moryath · · Score: 4, Insightful

      and if it wasn't for the man made disaster that was our levy system,

      You mean, if it wasn't for the greed and corruption that left the levee system unmaintained and ready to fail.

      And of course there's the fact that the levee system was rated for a category 3 hurricane, while Katrina was actually a Category 4 - in other words, exceed the specs, expect failures.

      I've visited NO. It's a decent place to visit. Wouldn't really want to live there till they get out of the Poverty-Pimp business though.

    4. Re:The technical issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      and if it wasn't for the man made disaster that was our levy system

      Wrong, if it weren't for the man made disaster of building a city that requires a massive levy system because it's sinking and now several feet below the level of the nearby ocean....

      The very existence of NO is just begging for Katrina and many more similar disasters.

    5. Re:The technical issues by Hognoxious · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So do massive oil spills from deep sea drilling. How do you feel about legislation to stop that from happening again

      Oil obeys the laws of nature, not the ones passed by congress.

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    6. Re:The technical issues by hesaigo999ca · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Like in sg atlantis, you would have a city that can move as a ship does, and also have a shield against the elements, surely a cloak of invisibility would help against the wraith!

    7. Re:The technical issues by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      "Wrong, if it weren't for the man made disaster of building a city that requires a massive levy system because it's sinking and now several feet below the level of the nearby ocean....

      The very existence of NO is just begging for Katrina and many more similar disasters."

      Well, it isn't like we just decided in the past couple of decades we'd like to build and little burg here and move in 'cause it would just be cool to live below sea level.

      New Orleans is older than the United States itself man...it is a city that is almost 300 years old man.

      And, it is located precisely where it is for a number of reasons, the largest reason being near the mouth of the Mississippi river to the Gulf. NOLA is a very important port city for the US. Pretty much everything from the midwest comes through us to go out to the world. You like seafood? Well, we pretty much provide about 1/3 of the US's seafood from this area. You kinda have to live near the water to do that. You like Oil? Well, at least..do you need it? Well, a great deal of the US's spigots are due to NOLA and our immediate areas, everything from people to run the rigs, to the 'taps' that the tanker ships unload to shore...to the refineries that people here run and work in.

      NOLA is a very important city...even if you don't care about the culture that NOLA has given the US, music, food, etc....economically, you should rethink how important you think it is.

      And hell...why can't we invest to protect it like the Netherlands does their areas that are below sea level?

      Every place in the US has its problems.

      Do we abandon CA, because it has earthquakes, fires, and mudslides? Do we abandon the cities in the midwest that flood from the Mississippi river? Do we abandon the panhandle states due to all the tornadoes? Do we abandon NYC because it is a target for terrorists (not to mention, they are WAY overdue for a hurricane situation that makes the one in NOLA look like a puddle jump)?

      Quit bitching about it...and come have some fun down here. We're friendly...its funny to watch it wear off on my northeastern friends that come here to visit.

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    8. Re:The technical issues by cayenne8 · · Score: 1, Insightful
      "So do massive oil spills from deep sea drilling. How do you feel about legislation to stop that from happening again, Mr. New Orleans?"

      I appreciate regulations to oversee and ensure that safety measures are taken.

      I am, however, quite against any moratorium that prevents drilling in the Gulf. We need oil in the US, and we need the money the industry brings to this area. It isn't just drilling we do here...we process a LOT of the stuff that we drill, plus what comes in on tankers from around the world.

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    9. Re:The technical issues by couchslug · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The Titanic was built to go ON the ocean.

      Bob Ballard found it UNDER the ocean.

      Lesson:

      When it's "ocean" vs. "techno-hubris", bet on "ocean".

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    10. Re:The technical issues by Fluffeh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      *shakes head* Whatever... I got plenty more karma to burn stating the truth even when it hurts some delicate snowflake's worldview.

      I don't think your original post is that offtopic, but I can say that seeing about 5 posts here with you arguing "this is ontopic, meta this, woe is me!" really isn't on topic of floating cities.

      Mods here are *sometimes* like a box of chocolate. You aren't sure what you will get. Sometimes posts that shoot up to +5 end up at -1, sometimes it is the other way around. I wouldn't worry about the modding that your posts get. If you are posting quality content, the masses will override the few. Besides, /. isn't about getting nothing but praise for comments, it is about making an interesting discussion.

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    11. Re:The technical issues by Grishnakh · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The state did ask for help eventually, didn't it? The help provided was substandard. You'd think they would have prepared themselves better so that when states did ask for help, it'd be ready to go, but that's not what happened. The military was off in a foreign country busy slaughtering the natives for oil, rather than being prepared for actually dealing with domestic problems.

      Aside from that, the Federal government completely failed at preparing the area for disaster beforehand, such as by having better levies. Obviously, that's not all Bush's fault (the neglect of LA has been going on for decades), but he certainly didn't do anything to help.

      Finally, appointing some moron to head FEMA whose only experience was running a stupid horse show was a recipe for disaster. (Of course, the Democrats aren't any better at picking people with relevant experience: Obama (who had no experience of his own) picked a Supreme Court justice who had never even been a judge!)

    12. Re:The technical issues by DigiShaman · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The military was off in a foreign country busy slaughtering the natives for oil, rather than being prepared for actually dealing with domestic problems.

      The US military is made up of many divisions. Louisiana didn't need the Marine Corp (unless martial law were ever to declared), they needed the Army Core of Engineers plus additional grunt work. And that's exactly what they got. From what I understand, there was no shortage of help here.

      Aside from that, the Federal government completely failed at preparing the area for disaster beforehand, such as by having better levies

      That's a STATE issue, *not* Federal. In fact, Louisiana has a special levee board (created long before Katrina) that's further broken down into regions with fund allocated to their maintenance. They had a funding an procedural system in place. All of this could have been avoided with proper planning by the state.

      I direct you to http://pdfcast.org/pdf/chart-of-accounts-louisiana-local-government

      And yes, I used to live in that state. Please learn a thing or two about it before you start slinging the political talking points around. You're spreading FUD when you do.

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    13. Re:The technical issues by __aawbkb6799 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No matter how much you like it, don't try to convince those not emotionally attached to it that NOLA is of a piece.

      The slums add no charm nor endearing culture. There is no logistic necessity for ANY of the parts below sea level, they are a result of bad planning or no planning.

      This smacks of latent racism and blaming the victim. Poor, black residents of new orleans have functionally no control over the elevation of their homes. To indicate that these peoples homes are somehow entirely devoid of value is the same kind of logic that justifies forced relocation of oppressed people anywhere anytime in history. you say that its a free country and all those living in the projects can simply move, but the same argument was made by fools after katrina: "those who lost everything in the hurricane should have simply packed up and left, they had 4 days warning." that probably requires the kind of capital and means of travel often shared by those communities, not individually owned and operated. i think that if you want to analyse the relative importance of parts of the oldest and most historic cities in the united states, you should consider that living in and maintaining that historicity is not simply a privilege but a civic duty to the living memory of the united states im sure you hold so near and dear to your heart. OTOH, i think it would be pretty baller to live on a floating city, so...

  2. Why drag the city along when land is cheap? by FooAtWFU · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For the price that you pay to build a whole city on the ocean, you could probably build the city on land, build the power generation stuff in the ocean, build a bunch of redundant transmission lines between the two, and still have tons of money left over to improve your lifestyle (and if you really want "green" stuff you could use to build extra windmills or switch to organic foods or whatever else). This really makes little sense.

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    1. Re:Why drag the city along when land is cheap? by RsG · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think the point is that this idea comes from Japan, where land is not cheap.

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  3. Re:Tsunamis by olsmeister · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In the middle of the ocean, a tsunami would barely be felt or noticed.

    I'd be more interested how they intend to deal with extremists flying an A380 into the 1km high tower, and what the impact of said tower collapsing onto the lily pad would be.

  4. Waterworld by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The energy cost of building this seaborne city would be much greater than whatever savings it might obtain, whether built at sea or shipped there from a land base. How about the energy costs of moving people between this city and anyplace else, from which it would be remote?

    Building on land isn't less energy efficient, it's more efficient. There's plenty of land near enough to oceans to take advantage of the ocean energy, without the higher costs of operating everything on the ocean. Any merit to these principles would be better applied to building a city on an island rather than a floating city from scratch.

    This project is an obvious waste of time, money and energy. I smell a government grant sucked up by bankers and their grad student patsies.

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    1. Re:Waterworld by CMontgomery · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What happened to doing things because they're cool. Sure it doesn't make sense now, but imagination is a powerful thing, and what about building the world's tallest building? There's no point to have a 150 story building, but we learned alot in doing so and we have something cool to look at. Who cares if it's pie-in-the-sky, great engineering projects would always seem silly. What do you think the people thought when Stonehenge was first being planned?

  5. Re:Tsunamis by vux984 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I 'm willing to take that chance; it really is so improbable that its the least of my worries.

  6. Clean up trash patch by avandesande · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How about figuring out a way to gather up the trash in the pacific and to aggregate it into a floating island?

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