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Maaya Manoj

Adapting to Climate Change with Floating Cities

Climate change is coming shockingly close to home and with new generations, people are starting to believe and take notice of the science behind it more. Everyone, from schools to governments to individuals, is making an effort to make some sort of change to their environments and prevent global warming. However, these changes are nowhere nearly enough, with people believing that using a metal straw will change the world. Firms spend millions of dollars trying to escape cases against them on the overuse of fossil fuels. Recently I’ve been noticing that it’s becoming a harsh reality—we may not be able to solve climate change, but might adapt to it successfully with a little bit of maths and science.


In 2020, I attended an exhibition in Singapore’s Art and Science Museum. It was called 2219: Futures Imagined. I went in believing that it was going to tell me about the benefits of things I already knew, like cloth bags. Instead, it shook me and my thinking to the core, convincing me by the end that there are so many other ways to comply with climate change than methods to try to fix it.


One big problem of climate change is rising sea levels, as we know. This effect could cause devastating effects on cities, by destroying homes, infrastructure, soil, and as an extreme, humans’ ability to live on coastal land, and maybe eventually, all land. As land mammals, it has never been considered that we can live on water, until now.


One of the concepts for living on water is floating cities. Very recently we are seeing architecture on water start to increase in popularity. For example, the world’s first floating Apple store down by Marina Bay Sands right here in Singapore, or New York’s new floating park, Little Island, open to the public for free! This got architects thinking about whether an entire society can be moved over water. One such architect is [nationality] designer Bjarke Ingels, leading multiple projects designed to adapt to climate change. One inspiring example of many would be Urban Rigger, the home of 12 students, in Copenhagen. Their home is on the dock of the city, designed and assembled in Poland, and is powered entirely by the sun. Multiple such homes now reside in Copenhagen. This gave rise to Ingels’ new plan first unveiled in 2019—a floating city named Oceanix City in South Korea by 2025.


To put it briefly, Oceanix City is an ecosystem built entirely on water. It’s powered by the kinetic energy from waves, the thermal mass of the water as well as solar energy. The residents would deal with their own waste through composting and sustainable materials. Their diets will be plant and fish based, due to the lack of space and resources for land animals, using farming methods entirely without soil such as hydroponics and aeroponics. One of many key features that fascinated me was the use of materials such as bamboo and wood to create a naturally cool environment. The exhibition included very similar ideas such as new modes of transportation like tall bikes, home farming and aluminium walls (natural home heating).


Global warming is taking a turn for the worse with people focusing on competition and success rather than the dire consequences of their actions. While we all say that giving up meat once a week is the most we can do to help, I believe that we must come to terms with reality and instead focus on doing what humans have done best for thousands of years, adapt to our surroundings rather than try to change them. Floating cities are nowhere near their completion but it has given us a lot of hope in making a future where new generations can say that, as Ingels fascinatingly phrased it, “they can’t believe that there was a time where one couldn’t ski over the power plant [of the floating city]”.



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