Freedom Ship is a

floating city ''Floating City'' () is a 2012 drama film directed by Yim Ho. A Chinese-Hong Kong co-production, the film was released on 18 and 19 May 2012 in mainland China and Hong Kong respectively. Premise The story of a self-made man in a rapidly changin ...

project initially proposed in the late 1990s by engineer Norman Nixon. The namesake of the project reflects the designer's vision of a mobile ocean colony, such that it is free from the property, municipal, or federal laws of any nation states. The project would not be a conventional ship, but rather a series of linked

barge A barge is typically a flat-bottomed boat, flat-bottomed vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. Original use was on inland waterways, while modern use is on both inland and ocean, marine water environments. The firs ...

s. The Freedom Ship project envisioned an integrated city longFloating Cities
at

How Stuff Works HowStuffWorks is an American commercial infotainment website founded by professor and author Marshall Brain, to provide its target audience an insight into the way many things work. The site uses various media to explain complex concepts, termi ...

; a discussion of floating cities using Freedom Ship as its example with

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership regime in which a building (or group of buildings) is divided into multiple units that are either each separately owned, or owned in common with exclusive rights of occupation by individual own ...

housing for 80,000 people, a hospital, school system, hotel, casino, commercial and office occupancies,

duty-free shop A duty-free shop or store is a retail outlet whose goods are exempt from the payment of certain local or national taxes and duties, on the requirement that the goods will be sold to travelers who will take them out of the country, who will ...

ping and other facilities, large enough to require

rapid transit Rapid transit or mass rapid transit (MRT) or heavy rail, commonly referred to as metro, is a type of high-capacity public transport that is generally built in urban areas. A grade separation, grade separated rapid transit line below ground su ...

. The complex would have

circumnavigated Circumnavigation is the complete navigation around an entire island, continent, or astronomical body (e.g. a planet or moon). This article focuses on the circumnavigation of Earth. The first circumnavigation of the Earth was the Magellan Exped ...

the globe continuously, stopping regularly at ports of call.

Construction

Freedom Ship International initially estimated the net cost for construction to be US$6

billion Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: * 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the most common sense of the word in all varieties of ...

in 1999. However, by 2002, estimates had risen to US$11 billion. A July 2008 press release explained the difficulty of obtaining reliable financial backing. In November 2013, the company announced that the project, now with an estimated price of US$10 billion, was being resurrected, though that construction had not yet begun. In 2016, the project affiliated with Kanethara Marine in India.

Similar projects

The basic idea had been published by

Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...

in his novel '' Propeller Island''. No technical details were given, but the book includes the idea of building a gigantic raft. The main aim of the project was saving taxes, as the Island would move around the world on an annual basis. Other projects, such as the ResidenSea, have similarly attempted to create mobile communities, though they have conservatively limited themselves to the constraints of conventional shipbuilding. In regard to the economic flexibility and "freedom" created by such mobile settlements, these projects could be considered a realization of the avant-garde

Walking City A walking city or walkable city is a type of city that is created to avoid internal Transport, transportation, and therefore be small enough that a person can use walking to navigate the city. It is characterized by narrow, often winding Street ...

concept from 1964, by British architect

Ron Herron Ronald James Herron () was an English architect and teacher. He is perhaps best known for his work with the seminal experimental architecture collective Archigram, which was formed in London in the early 1960s. Herron was the creator of one of ...

of the group

Archigram Archigram was an avant-garde British architectural group whose unbuilt projects and media-savvy provocations "spawned the most influential architectural movement of the 1960's," according to Princeton Architectural Press study ''Archigram'' (19 ...

. The Freedom Ship also served as the inspiration for (and is closely resembled by) the ''Libertania'', a mobile ship depicted in Grant Morrison's comic book '' The Filth''. In the 1950s,

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more t ...

also proposed "floating cities" approximately a mile wide that could accommodate up to 50,000 permanent inhabitants. Mike Wallace interviewed Buckminster Fuller on TV regarding this "floating cities" concept, which Fuller explained would free up land needed for agriculture and industrial uses.

References

{{Reflist Proposed ships Proposed populated places 1990s in science Proposed arcologies

Construction

Similar projects

See also

References