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EricHunting t1_j6vzlbd wrote

There are two aspects to this proposition; communities built at shore in sheltered water and communities built on the open sea. The two examples are of the former type, both relying on natural bays and connection to nearby urban facilities. So these are not really very different from the houseboat communities that have existed in many places for centuries or their more modern alternatives developed in the US/Canadian northwest and the Netherlands.

Houseboat communities were originally created to exploit what was once undervalued (because of their industrial aspect) waterfront areas, avoid costly coastal property prices, and their property taxes creating attractors for the poor and alienated dockworking class resulting in what would be their main appeal; eclectic makeshift architecture with a nautical character and a bohemian multi-ethnic atmosphere. This, of course, is what resulted in most modern municipalities systematically destroying them, with those that remain evolved into eclectic neighborhoods with some tourism gravitas or enough wealthy folk able to bully local bureaucracies into submission. San Francisco's houseboat community is a prime example. In the Netherlands, however, they became simply another way to facilitate development in a place flood prone and short on land and were sponsored by government, but in that case they have been far less eclectic in design and largely indestinguishable from the upper-middle-class townhouse developments of the region. The developers behind the Maldives project noted is a famous developer of these very projects. Similar development has gone on in the Seattle/Vancouver area for some time, but this being the sort of country it is, the aspect is more of a variation on the gated community. The ferrocement construction technology used is quite common to what is now known as the 'floating home industry' and has been in use for many decades. Basically, slab foundations on water. There is really nothing very special about living in these places, since they've all mostly lost that bohemian eclecticism that once made them appealing and are indestinguishable from other housing development --though these projects are more mixed-use. It's just another way to squeeze more high-end waterfront housing into overloaded urban areas, now with an eco-tech greenwashing angle rather than the bohemian subculture appeal of the past. However, the Maldives project is likely to be exclusively tourism-centric and rather theme-park-like.

Open sea communities remain something of a pipe dream because of the overhead of very large breakwater structures or active wave attenuation structures needed to exist in open sea conditions and the need for independent transportation with very modest operational economies of scale yet intercontinental range. (which, basically, doesn't exist off-the-shelf) In spite of this, they remain something of an obsession for those enamored of the fantasy of Galt's Gulch style autonomous zones or, even less likely, total personal autarky. They are, technically, feasible to create but unlikely except through some very large industrial venture --and there are only a few possibilities there-- or the efforts of billionaires motivated, perhaps, by the desire to escape the consequences of a collapse of civilization on land they so greatly contributed to. Most proposals for these marine colonies have, to date, been grossly ill-conceived, their creators more enamored of their AnCap ideological fantasies than the practical logistics of creating sustainable ventures and places to live. If not Muskian techno-grifts from the start, they usually end in similar fashion...

Open sea marine settlements could become a vector of development for some powerful renewables technology; OTEC, polyspecies mariculture, H-ship and hybrid sail technology, etc. But their huge flaw is that we simply don't have a low-carbon way to build them as they would rely on concrete we, as yet, have no practical carbon-neutral/negative alternatives for. And we're talking massive, Hoover Dam, volumes of concrete here these things could never persist long enough (given the 50 year at best lifespan of concrete in even benign conditions) to compensate for.

Coastal settlements have a similar problem with concrete (the Oceanix company talks, in their marketing pitches, of some variant of the long-debunked Hilbertz electrolytic accretion process, which is doubtful), but need only use ferrocement for their base platforms. Actual buildings would be made from lighter materials, which have many sustainable options --assuming anyone cares to use them.

One promising green role for such communities has been in eco-tourism where locating habitation on the water can preserve the natural habitats nearby people are seeking to visit. And a number of people in the Northwest have adopted floating homes on this very basis, wishing to preserve the pristine beauty of the forest properties they are living next to. And this comes with the advantage of an essentially pre-made mobile home quickly deployed, much like the Tiny Homes but less restricted in size and easy to expand. That's something I could certainly get behind, though it would need to be supported with some equally green transportation, the boats and small planes common to the area pretty bad in fossil fuel use. Being 'off grid' isn't really as green as it's made out to be. In this context such communities have potential for creating eco-villages, eco-cities, and proto-arcologies in the remote locations these are usually relegated to, but with less local impact, exploring the possibilities of various communal/mutualist/cooperative living arrangements, urban farming and independent industry technology, and the like. But, as yet, no one has actually proposed such things. (well, with the exception of yours truly...)

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Surur t1_j6wdgel wrote

You seem knowledgeable on this issue. What about the version where they just lash ships together? Like in the great junk armada as depicted in Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

We see boats being scrapped all the time, so presumably, there is a supply of boats which could grow organically?

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TraceSpazer t1_j6xo220 wrote

Issue seems like it would be the need for a breakwater or ships large enough to weather inclement weather and the occasional rogue wave.

The great junk armada would sink rather quickly.

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Arcologycrab t1_j734idx wrote

I mean a bunch of sailors who got trapped in the Suez Canal linked their cargo ships together to make what is essentially a floating apartment

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EricHunting t1_j6zzcm3 wrote

Again, limited to locations that are already sheltered bays or have some other structures providing this shelter. Under normal sea conditions a lashed-together collection of ships will grind each other to bits. This is why oil rigs can't often have anything docked to them. They use cranes to move people and equipment from boats. Naval ships setup cable shuttles to move people and goods between ships. It's possible that some locations on the sea --in some strange future weather conditions-- may remain so calm as to allow ships to safely dock to each other for long periods. But the first storm to come along would quickly destroy them. Snow Crash seems to have been borrowing on the folklore of the Sargasso Sea whose large patches of seaweed were once said to trap ships and bind them into strange communities of the lost. This was often depicted in old adventure literature, comics, and fantasy art. But it was just myth. Sargasso weed is very light and while it gathers together in gyres like plastic trash, it is also constantly being broken up and reformed.

There was once a proposal for a Sargasso-like marine settlement based on the principles of a colonial organism, composed of dwelling pods, energy 'animals' with deployable wind and solar, fish pens, and other special floating modules linked together by a web of cables and always digitally aware of their relative positions. Using parasails for propulsion, it would gather its parts together closer when the sea conditions were calm allowing gangways to be used --trying to travel mostly in the 'doldrums' along the Equator-- but would spread out over a larger area to avoid collisions when the weather was rough. The catch with this idea was that dwellings were like the escape pods used by oil rigs and people would have to put up with a very rough ride every time the weather turned poor. However, such a concept might be combined with 'sea tower' designs using SPAR buoy structures that were more comfortable, but very difficult to fabricate or repair at sea.

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Surur t1_j70x9bo wrote

Thank you. That was very informative.

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