Many dream of living in an ocean city, but what is it actually like? Rose Eveleth asks the ruler of Sealand, the unusual settlement off the coas

Ocean living: A step closer to reality?

Today, as futurists, tech billionaires and libertarians start looking to the sea for the next stage of cities and governance,1 Sealand serves as a tiny example, a strange and intriguing case study of all the good and the bad of living on the waves. What can the experiences of the Bates family tell those who dream about ocean living?

  • 1. Though scientists aren’t predicting sea-level rises of the magnitude seen in Waterworld – hundreds of feet thanks to melting polar ice caps – we may have to plan for a world with much higher sea levels. There has long been a dream that one day mankind, or at least some of us, will live on the ocean. Designer and architect Buckminster Fuller saw cities at sea contributing to a sustainable future for humanity. But then floating cities evoked images of flop films, or worse, of wealthy “robber barons” escaping to the high seas for financial reasons. Now, several groups are trying to change this perception by researching technologies that could help create floating cities, or “seasteads”, which become innovative models of sustainability and peaceful cooperation.

    Does this sound too futuristic? Then consider China’s Fujian Province,where the Tanka people have been settled at sea since 700AD. Pushed into coastal waters in wartime during the Tang Dynasty, these boat dwellers weren’t allowed to set foot on land until the second half of the 20th Century. Today, some 7,000 Tankas still maintain a sea farming life – possibly a preview of a future to come for many more of us. Before the industrialisation of agriculture, most people lived in land-based villages no larger or more complex than the Tankas’ simple water-based community. It took a series of green revolutions in farming technology to allow people to leave rural communities, and move into densely-populated urban areas. We see signs that a “blue revolution” in ocean harvesting technology is underway, suggesting floating cities can’t be far off.

    Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131101-living-on-the-ocean