In pictures: world's first sustainable floating city featuring 'flood-proof infrastructure'

Built Environment, Flooding

A prototype of the world’s first sustainable floating city will be built by 2025 on the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula, it has been announced.

This historic agreement between The Busan Metropolitan City of the Republic of Korea, UN-Habitat and OCEANIX – a blue tech company formed in 2018 to design and build floating cities for people to live sustainably on the ocean – comes as the threat to coastal cities from sea level rise becomes ever more real.

Figures cited in the above release outline that two out of every five people in the world live within 100 kilometres of the coast, and 90 per cent of mega cities worldwide are vulnerable to rising sea levels.

Commenting on the deal UN-Habitat executive director Maimunah Mohd Sharif said:

“Sustainable floating cities are a part of the arsenal of climate adaptation strategies available to us. Instead of fighting with water, let us learn to live in harmony with it. We look forward to developing nature-based solutions through the floating city concept, and Busan is the ideal choice to deploy the prototype.”

Busan Mayor Park Heong-joon added: “With the complex changes facing coastal cities, we need a new vision where it is possible for people, nature and technology to co-exist. There is no better place than Busan to take the first step towards sustainable human settlements on the ocean, proudly built by Korea for the world.”

OCEANIX cofounders Itai Madamombe and Marc Collins Chen, outlined that the approach to the prototype would be hyper-local level, considering the host country’s rich social, economic, political and cultural uniqueness.

As well as featuring a ‘flood proof infrastructure’ that rises with the sea, the city is also set to produce its own food, energy and fresh water with fully integrated zero waste closed-loop system.

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