Floating cities could ease the world’s housing crunch, the UN says
Squeezed between rising populations, rising seas, and threatened ecosystems, cities need new options, including a real-world approach to the formerly fanciful vision of offshore communities.
The United NationsThe corridors and meeting rooms here bustled this week with a familiar-sounding mix of sessions, on “policy options for low fertility,” the launch of “The State of Pacific Youth Report,” the “International Day of Sport for Development and Peace.”
But something completely different was going on in conference room 8 on Wednesday, where a glowing blue-and-beige model on a central podium illustrated the theme on the door: “Sustainable Floating Cities.” (See more photos of floating city concepts.)
There, dozens of experts, investors, scientists, and officials—along with a group of students on a video link from Nairobi—explored a new approach to building offshore hubs of habitation, commerce, education, and recreation designed to ease pressures facing coastal cities squeezed between rising populations,
