South Korea is set to build a “sustainable floating city," a world first, off the coast of a major city by 2023.
The project, which presented its prototype renderings at a United Nations (UN) roundtable on Tuesday (26 April) will be off the coast of Busan, a large port city known for its beaches, mountains and temples.
The ambitious project is a partnership made up by OCEANIX, which is a blue tech company based in New York, the city of Busan and the UN-Habitat ‘Human Settlement Programme’.
UN’s role appears purely advisory at this stage but will later set to work on collecting data on how the city operates, Screenshot reported.
“As Mayor of the Metropolitan City of Busan, I take seriously our commitment to the credo ‘The First to the Future’.
"We joined forces with UN-Habitat and OCEANIX to be the first to prototype and scale this audacious idea because our common future is at stake in the face of sea level rise and its devastating impact on coastal cities,” said Mayor Park Heong-joon in a press release.
The floating city is a response to climate change and will be able to adapt to the fluctuating environments that climate change throws up.
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Artist images of the city show it built on floating platforms, all linked to each other – as well as to the mainland – by bridges.
The metropolis is also expected to be fully sustainable.
“Meetings like this one are not empty talk,” Maimunah Mohd Sharif, executive director of the Human Settlements Programme, said in a statement on Tuesday.
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“Three years ago at our first roundtable, everyone wondered when they might visit a floating city or see its revolutionary architecture, experience its zero-waste environment, sample its home-grown produce and enjoy a new way of living sustainably with nature.
"We now have the answer. Plans are in place.”
The city would be able to host 12,000 people initially, with scope for a future capacity of 100,000.
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