Futuristic Island City

    Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal gave cities in the world a different definition by working in co-ordination with Seasteading Institute for the first floating city to be launched off the coast of San Francisco in 2013. The Seasteading Institute, founded by Gramlich & Friedman on April 15, 2008 is a concept for creating permanent houses at sea which are called Seasteads. These seasteads are formed outside the land which is claimed by the government of any nation around.

At the Seasteading Institute a special forum is set up to look into the working of these island cities. In the forum, firstly the basic plan on the functioning of the island city is made and a basic consensus is drawn so as to how basic needs & resources are to be obtained to sustain living beings. After this, an analysis is drawn on the material which is to be used to construct this structure. The availability of this construction material is not a major hindrance as it is used for Oil platforms & Concrete Submarines. A fixed size has not yet been determined for the seastead which had been scheduled to launch in 2010, but could not due to major construction issues & it is remarked that the individual capacity of this seastead will be more than 150 individuals. For the first floating city Thiel contributed $500,000 which has immensely boosted the functioning practices on this particular venture with the Institute.

The main branch of connectivity between the Seastead & land is being worked upon by a company called “Blueseed”, which is working on launching a ship near the Silicon Valley. This ship will serve as a visa-free business incubator for the individuals on the seastead to earn a sustainable way of earning. Some of the various services offered are living, office space & high speed internet connectivity. The shipstead also offers ferry service to the mainland for individuals & resources. This project has been delayed over the past few months due to difficulty which is faced for obtaining US work visas for officials on the Seastead.

It is self-proclaimed that the governing laws for the Seastead would be very loose rules & regulations and government intervention would be the least. Though there were few complications which came up during the formation of the module design for this seastead. Some of them being pirates, floods & if the construction material was strong enough to withstand the turbulences and other unforeseen circumstances

On a personal note, it will be a challenge inspite of the technology checks to build a very sustainable structure. Building a structure like this for humanity to sustain throughout is a major challenge to overcome. Another barrier would be the accumulation of resources in the seatsead as this would majorly affect living beings incase of shortage.

Throughout the years, this institute has conceptualized in the years an appropriate design, innovation & creativity in offshore communities. “Spar buoys” is an example of one such community, which is being worked upon. For this community a custom made seastead would be a dumbbell created with technology techniques checked by the Maritime Innovation & Technology.