12. During the 1960s and 1970s, “Sea Cities” were proposed as solutions to growing populations in existing major urban areas
With the post-World War II population boom and rapidly expanding city populations during the later decades of the 20th century, it is unsurprising that imaginative futurists believed these issues would be solved in a host of unorthodox solutions. Among the less accurate, and most fanciful of these technological wonders was the “Sea City”. Sea Cities were, as the name suggests, literally floating on the ocean waters. Building off of the work of American architect Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s, in 1979 Kenneth Gatland and David Jefferis designed an incredible, technologically advanced settlement for human habitation on the high seas. A “pyramid-shaped structure”, serving as a “self-contained city” instead of “building more suburbs or tower blocks” in existing population centers, the “sea city” would serve as an “archology”: the perfect blending of architecture and ecology to create a low-impact human settlement.
Essentially “one huge building”, complete “with shops, schools, playgrounds, and homes, all within walking distance of each other” and hence “no need for cars” and thus “no congestion”, this idyllic city would recycle of all its waste to maintain “ecological balance with its environment”. Coated in solar panels for the production of electricity, and supplied by ship and air, the sea city would serve as an ideal home for workers in the field of seabed mining: “sure to be an important activity in the 21st century”.