BUSAN < invest Korea

                                                                                                                                                                             

According to Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea,

Busan, South Korea’s southern coast city, has embarked on the unprecedented United Nations-sponsored project of building a “floating city” to house 10,000 people upon completion in 2030 to ready the mankind against higher sea levels and other climate change disasters.

The Busan Metropolitan Government is joining the conference on a sustainable floating city project led by the UN-Habitat Human Settlements Program at the UN headquarters in New York on April 26.

Oceanix, New York-based enterprise of designers, architects, and engineers to build the floating city prototypes, will pitch fund-raising and sourcing for the project at the meeting.

The United Nations’ urban development agency sees floating cities as a drastic solution to the threat posed by climate change and rising sea levels.

The second largest city of South Korea, the UN-Habitat, and Oceanix signed a memorandum of understating in November last year to construct the world’s first floating community.

Under the deal, Busan is responsible for various administrative work, Oceanix for project oversight, and UN-Habitat for fund-raising.

The project aims to create a “flood-proof” city in harmony with the marine ecosystem. Comprising a series of interconnected platforms, the floating city will rise and fall with the sea.

Prefabricated in factories and then towed into position, each platform is designed to house 300 people in buildings up to seven stories high. These communities could be arranged into more extensive networks, connected via walkways and bicycle paths. The neighborhoods could be clustered around a central harbor to form a wider 10,000-person metropolis.

The project is not likely to face technological challenges, as floating houses and offices have already been built and used. The Netherlands, where about a third of its land is below sea level, is building floating housing communities.

By Park Dong-min and Jenny Lee

Copyrights Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea. All Rights Reserved.

Source: Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea (April 4, 2022)