The Maldives Wants To Tide Over Sinking With A Colorful Floating City

Hotter temperatures, melting glaciers, and increasing sea levels. Through it all, a floating city emerges from the Indian Ocean. The Maldives was threatened to sink beneath the tides by the end of the century if global warming continued. Now, it’s setting out to sea and making the best of these changing tides.  

The project in the Maldives will be the second floating city to be approved, after South Korea announced its own floating metropolis off the coast of Busan. This newly approved zone, which is being designed by developer Dutch Docklands’ Waterstudio, is set to be built outside of the capital of Malé, where it will be home to 20,000 inhabitants by 2027.  

Shaped like the nexus of a brain, with 5,000 interconnected units through walkways and canals within a 200-hectare lagoon, the city will be enclosed by a ring of islands to protect it from the surrounding waves.

Simply named the Maldives Floating City, the property will include shops, schools restaurants, and homes. Low-rise houses and beaches, which will help sustain the structural integrity of the city, will be built in the inner circle, while the outskirts will feature a commercial district and hotels.

The government-backed city could potentially qualify you for Maldivian residency permits if you own a home there.  

The units are to be built in a shipyard on the main land before being transported to the new city. In order to ensure the safety of residents, each unit will be placed on top of a hull that has been screwed with telescopic stilts to the seabed. This will allow the area to ebb and flow with the waves. As no land will be reclaimed, no coral reefs will be destroyed.  

As the world changes, innovators are looking to find solutions in the most interesting of places, including building floating cities that sit on top of the water to flow with the changing tides of global warming.  

[via New York Post and Robb Report, cover image via Maldives Floating City]