Seasteading

Many architects and firms have created designs for floating cities, including Vincent Callebaut,[6][7] Paolo Soleri[8] and companies such as Shimizu, Ocean Builders[9] and E. Kevin Schopfer.[10]

For a dozen years L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, and his executive leadership became a maritime-based community named the Sea Organization (Sea Org). Beginning in 1967 with a complement of four ships, the Sea Org spent most of its existence on the high seas, visiting ports around the world for refueling and resupply. In 1975 much of these operations were shifted to land-based locations.

Marshall Savage discussed building tethered artificial islands in his 1992 book The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps, with several color plates illustrating his ideas.

A 1998 essay by Wayne Gramlich attracted the attention of Patri Friedman.[11] The two began working together and posted their first collaborative book online in 2001.[12] Their book explored many aspects of seasteading from waste disposal to flags of convenience. This collaboration led to the creation of the non-profit The Seasteading Institute (TSI) in 2008.

As an intermediate step, the Seasteading Institute has promoted cooperation with an existing nation on prototype floating islands with legal semi-autonomy within the nation's protected territorial waters. On 13 January 2017, the Seasteading Institute signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with French Polynesia to create the first semi-autonomous "seazone" for a prototype,[13][14] but later that year political changes driven by the French Polynesia presidential election led to the indefinite postponement of the project.[15] French Polynesia formally backed out of the project and permanently cut ties with Seasteading on 14 March 2018.[16]

The first single-family seastead was launched near Phuket, Thailand by Ocean Builders in March 2019.[17][18] Two months later, the Thai Navy claimed the seastead was a threat to Thai sovereignty.[19] In 2019, Ocean Builders said it will be building again in Panama, with the support of government officials.[20] As of 2022, the project's status is uncertain.

In April 2019, the concept of floating cities as a way to cope with rising oceans was included in a presentation by the United Nations program UN-Habitat. As presented, they would be limited to sheltered waters.[21]

Historical predecessors and inspirations for seasteading include:

• Oil platforms.
• The Principality of Sealand, a micronation formed on a decommissioned sea fort near Suffolk, England.[28]
• Smaller floating islands in protected waters, such as Richart Sowa's Spiral Island
• Floating communities, such as the Uru people on Lake Titicaca, the Tanka people in Aberdeen, Hong Kong, and the Makoko in Lagos, Nigeria.
• The non-profit Women on Waves, which operates hospital ships that allow access to abortions for women in countries where abortions are subject to strict laws
• The Republic of Rose Island, a short-lived micronation on a man-made platform in the Adriatic Sea, 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) off the coast of the province of Rimini, Italy.
• Pirate radio stations anchored in international waters, broadcasting to listeners on shore.

Criticisms have been leveled at both the practicality and desirability of seasteading.

Critics believe that founding and building a government is difficult.[44] Also, seasteads would still be at risk of political interference from nation states.[45]

On a logistical level, without access to culture, travel, restaurants, shopping, and other amenities, seasteads could be too remote and too uncomfortable to be attractive to potential long-term residents.[45] Building seasteads to withstand the rigors of the open ocean may prove uneconomical.[44][45]

Seastead structures may blight ocean views, their industry or farming may deplete their environments, and their waste may pollute surrounding waters. Some critics believe that seasteads will exploit both residents and the nearby population.[44] Others fear that seasteads will mainly allow wealthy individuals to escape taxes,[3] or to harm mainstream society by ignoring other financial, environmental, and labor regulations.[3][44]

Seasteading has been imagined many times in novels, from Jules Verne's 1895 science-fiction book Propeller Island (L'Île à hélice) about an artificial island designed to travel the waters of the Pacific Ocean, to the 2003 novel The Scar, which featured a floating city named Armada. It has been a central concept in some movies, notably Waterworld (1995), and in TV series such as Stargate Atlantis, which had a complete floating city. It is a common setting in video games, forming the premise of the Bioshock series, Brink, and Call of Duty: Black Ops II; and in anime, such as Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet which takes place mainly on a traveling city made of an interconnected fleet of ocean ships.

• Gramlich, Wayne (1998). "Seasteading – Homesteading on the High Seas".
• Neumeyer, Kenneth (1981). Sailing the Farm. Ten Speed Press. ISBN 0-89815-051-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)

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