Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is Constructive Voices. Constructive Voices, the podcast for the construction people with news, views and expert interviews.
Well, hello there. This is Jackie De Burca again for Constructive Voices. Today I have what I believe to be one of the most fascinating topics of our time, which is the idea of living on a floating residence. So we've brought to you an amazing guest who's been talking about this topic. He tells me for around 20 years and I will say without any shame whatsoever that it's a topic that I wasn't as familiar with at the beginning and I really believe I would happily go and live in one of these floating urban developments. Now, having spoken to Rootgard the graph, who is the. Oh, go on Rutger, you take it over from here.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Co founder and director of Blue 21 and I've been working in the field of floating urban development for the past 18 years, doing design work, consulting work, R and D, realizing floating projects in the Netherlands, but also a lot of work abroad.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Fantastic. Now I heard another podcast that you were featured in and as part of my homework for today and you have such an interesting journey as to how you came to be involved in your work today. Can you share that please?
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So it was really during my PhD studies at the TU Delft where I was working on water innovations, which cities can use to become less vulnerable to climate change, when I participated in an international contest, the Delta Competition.
I co founded a team of students, interdisciplinary group of students and we participated in this contest with a design and realization strategy of a floating city near Amsterdam. And we won the contest International Delta Competition. And this was really the start of our company back in 2007 when we started our first company, specialized in the design and engineering of floating projects.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Fantastic. Now obviously you've been deeply involved in projects that integrate water and urban development. How has your perspective evolved over the years regarding the role of water in future proofing our cities?
[00:02:19] Speaker B: This evolved a lot over the years because I'm from the Netherlands. I grew up in a small town three and a half meters below the sea level. And then I started to study civil engineering where I got lectures by professors that were involved in the design of the storm surge barriers, design of dikes. And as you know, in the Netherlands we have been fighting the water for centuries, mainly by making windmills, pumping out the water, building the dikes. But I always was very fascinated and became more fascinated throughout my studies if there would also be another way of dealing with this or I should say an additional way. So should we always keep fighting the water or would there Also be a possibility to live with the water, to adapt to the water. And this really started to influence my thinking also through the Delta competition, where, for the first time, I got involved in the concept and technology of floating urban development, where the buildings and infrastructure would just adapt during a flood to the higher water levels. And that really was, for me, the starting point in my transition. And I think it's also a transition that we're experiencing now in the Netherlands, from fighting against the water to living with the water. And then the next step would be living on the water.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: Okay, so, like a lot of people, Rutger would associate floating cities with, you know, futuristic concepts. But because you've been working on making them a reality, what would you feel the current state of floating urban development is, and what are the biggest challenges right now?
[00:03:58] Speaker B: So, yeah, we see a lot of big, futuristic visions of Antarctic floating cities in the middle of the ocean.
On the other hand, in the Netherlands, we already have a long history with floating housing. And what we have been seeing over the past two decades is that the projects, floating housing projects, are getting larger. And we're no longer talking only about houseboats. It's really about floating urban development. And we see designs for floating public space.
We see those projects getting larger and larger. So what we're really focused on right now is the upscaling of the technology. The technology of floating urban development is proven. It's out there. There's projects that you can visit, you can take photographs, you can dive in and swim under them if you want to. But of course, the big what we're still working on, what we really see as a next step, is can we make bigger platforms and not only single houses, but also floating apartment complexes? Can we make those floating apartment complexes also, not only for the rich, but also we're working on social housing, affordable social housing. And then it's not only about housing. We also have made plans for floating ports.
Many ports all over the world are facing land scarcity. And a great way for port areas to expand underwater is by using floating ports. And we have done very detailed RD studies and also wave basin simulation tests to assess the viability and technical feasibility of those kind of larger floating structures. So that's really what we're going through. And we started with the houseboats. Now we see the first floating neighborhoods. And then the next step is even larger neighborhoods. And in the end, floating cities, not only housing, also public space, green space, recreation, commercial space, and also logistics space, such as floating ports.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: Fantastic. Now, what are the biggest challenges in all of this.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: So I think technically a challenge is if you move from, let's say, the calm inland waters to a place like the North Sea, which is one of the most hostile wave environments in the world. Obviously, from an engineering point of view, there's a lot of things you need to do. You need to make sure that your projects are safe.
Not only safe, but also comfortable. You don't want people to get seasick all the time.
So we're very heavily involved in those kind of engineering studies, making larger platforms in more aggressive wave environments. But that's not the only challenge, of course, from a technical perspective, there's many things that we can do, but it also needs to be incorporated in spatial policy, in legislation, in regulations. And I think that is still, at the moment the biggest obstacle in scaling this is not the technology, because we can do a lot, but it's more related to policy and political decision making, which is at the moment a reason why this is not yet accelerated in the speed that we would like to see it.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Sure, I guess we can say that unfortunately about a lot of aspects of positive nature based solutions around climate change and so on, couldn't we?
[00:07:04] Speaker B: I think so too. And another aspect that I didn't mention yet is, of course, the ecological impact. We have done more than 10 years of research with underwater drones going under the floating platforms with very sophisticated sensors. We have collected heaps of data and underwater footage. And what we're seeing so far is that the project that we have studied, and we have studied more than 15 projects in the Netherlands, don't have a critical negative influence on the water quality.
From an ecological perspective. What we're seeing is that under floating platforms, we see new ecosystems emerging. So we have mussels and shellfish attaching to the floating structure. We see that small fish are using the floating structure as a hiding place, as a kind of a nursery. So we also, through our research with underwater drones, we have seen that floating structures also offer an opportunity for ecological improvement of the aquatic habitat.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Okay, that's fascinating. Now, in practical terms, how do floating buildings and cities interact with existing infrastructure? And how do they contribute to climate resilience?
[00:08:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's a very good question.
One of the fascinating things about floating structures is that usually these are hollow structures because they have to be very light. So we make, for instance, steel or concrete foundations or composites. There are different materials that we can use. But often those structures, they create a lot of space.
And the space can be used for decentralized technologies of wastewater treatment. They can be used for decentralized drinking water treatment. The space in the floating platforms can be used for electricity storage. So floating structures, by nature, they offer a lot of opportunities to become more self supporting, to become more off grid. And we have also done, for instance, a floating solar study. Floating solar is a great technology also to have floating energy generation. We all know about the floating offshore wind. Of course, we can also use floating algae and seaweed systems to produce floating biofuels. So floating urban development creates a lot of opportunities to implement decentralized concepts for water and energy. And in that sense, connecting a floating neighborhood to the shore with a sewer system is not necessary. So I think that in itself creates a form of resilience because these smaller scale structures are more self supporting, they're less vulnerable than the huge grids. If you have a power blackout or something, it has a big impact. But if neighborhoods create their own, have their own system, it's more redundant and more resilient.
That's one thing. What we have also seen through our years of research in wave basin tests is that floating structures, they reduce the wave impact on the coast. So the moment you start creating a floating neighborhood in front of the coast, you're also protecting the coast from storms, from waves.
In addition to being flood adaptive themselves, they also protect the mainland from being flooded during extreme weather.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: How interesting. So sort of like a sponge city effect, but not exactly that.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: No, it has some similarities. It does. It's a kind of a buffer. It's. Yeah, it takes the wave impact and what we're seeing both in the numerical simulations that we're doing. But also the wave basin test, A wave Height can reduce 50, 60, 70% by putting floating structures in front of the coast.
And of course, that will prevent you from the need to, for instance, increase the level of your dikes or your flood levies. So that I think that's a big thing because of course, sea level rise is a very important trend, but flooding in general occurs during very extreme weather, which is also expected to occur more often because of climate change impact. So I think floating structures work in different ways in climate resilience. It addresses the root causes of climate change, it can protect the coast, it's flood resilient by nature. So it can also function as a flood shelter during extreme weather. People from the land going to the floating structure. So yeah, all of these are very interesting aspects and dimensions of flood resilience.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: Okay, now it leads us on to sort of a very interconnected topic, which is how does floating urbanism fit into Broader climate adaptation strategies, particularly in like delta regions and coastal cities that are vulnerable to rising sea levels.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think in general, the way I see it is that floating urban development is. It should be part of the toolbox. It's not the only solution, it's not the only thing that you should do. But I also think it's something that you should always take into account in particular in low lying coastal areas, because all of these areas are rapidly urbanizing. They're all facing land scarcity.
The good places to build on are already occupied. So you see cities expanding in marshland, in quite vulnerable areas. And then I think floating urban development can provide a really good alternative also as part of a wider resilience strategy to be used as part of the toolbox.
So what we're seeing now is that cities often use land reclamation to expand, basically putting a lot of sand in front of the coast and then build on it.
There's a number of disadvantages to that. The sand is getting scarce. Sand mining has detrimental impacts on the environment.
And of course, the moment you put a lot of sand in front of the coast, the aquatic ecosystem disappears.
Whereas what we're seeing with floating is that we see new ecosystems also emerging under the floating platforms. So I think that floating is a really interesting technology and strategy for coastal cities all over the world that are figuring out how to deal with climate change impact and how to become more climate resilient.
Floating can also be used in a hybrid solution with land reclamation. Of course, the very shallow areas, land reclamation is still very cheap, but in deeper waters you would need so much sand that floating is probably a better alternative.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Now, what are the key technological innovations, Rutger, that help enable floating cities and what's still needed to make large scale adoption viable. And I throw in at the end, apart from political decisions.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah. So technically we have been working on modular and scalable technologies. How can we make platforms in such a way that we also using automated production of floating platforms, modular construction so that we can easily expand on the water. So there's a lot of technical advancements in the basically in the past two decades that make it much easier and also more effective to have larger scale floating urban development also in terms of engineering and calculation methods. So at Blue 21, we're now using supercomputers to engineer floating platforms of hundreds and hundreds of meters. So up to one square kilometer, that's what we have even engineered. So these are all technologies that were not there 20 years ago and are available now to really facilitate the upscaling of floating structures.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Looking ahead, do you think that we'll see floating cities as like a mainstream solution in the next few decades, or do you feel that they'll still remain kind of niche projects?
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Yes. Well, if you really look at the classical idea of a floating city, a floating city in the middle of the ocean, that's probably still will be a niche.
I think it will happen, but it will stay relatively small. But where we see the big potential is coastal delta cities, not necessarily building floating cities, but building floating city expansion. So basically, coastal cities expanding underwater. And that's where we see the big potential. Because if you look at the world map, most of the biggest cities are located at the coast. They're growing rapidly. And of course, the coastal areas, that's where the interesting economic activity occurs. That's where people want to live.
So that's where we see the big next step would be expansions of existing cities underwater.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: Okay. And that kind of leads us in really to the next question very nicely. Rutger, your work focuses on making obviously cities more resilient to climate change, you know, especially when it comes to flooding. How should cities be rethinking their relationship with water? And you've kind of half answered that, but are there other things that they could be doing?
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Yes. Well, I think historically water was always water import areas were always very integrated in coastal cities. They were part of the daily life. And then with industrialization, what we're seeing is that the port areas are moving away from the cities. Cities water became polluted, so became more like a threat. So I think many cities in the world have kind of turned their back to the water. And we're seeing now the opposite process in the past 20 years, cities rediscovering the water again.
We see it in the Netherlands, for instance. We see old canals that were basically turned into parking spaces. They're being reopened again, renovated, and back to their old state. So I also think that coastal cities all over the world are rediscovering the value of the water, also to have a pleasant life for the citizens. Yeah, floating urban development really builds onto that. So it really opens the opportunity to even have a closer relation to the water and no longer seeing it only as the enemy, but more also as an opportunity for economic opportunities, but also to have a really interesting view, to be really close to the water, for recreational functionalities. So I think floating fits in a really nice way in that trend that we're witnessing globally, that cities start to really rediscover their relation with the water.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: So obviously you are a Dutch person and the Netherlands has long been a leader in water management. What lessons, root card do you think other countries could learn from the Dutch approaches and where do you see room for improvement around the world?
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Yeah, so, yeah, so we are kind of, yeah, special country, of course, because part of our countries is already below sea level already for a long time.
And yeah, we're depending on pumping stations and flood defenses and storm surge barriers to keep our country livable.
And in that sense, it's also not so surprising that a group of Dutch architects and engineers comes up with the idea of floating urban development, I think. But what we're seeing is that many of the things that we have experiencing in the Netherlands for centuries are now also happening globally in many delta areas.
So land subsidence occurs in many delta areas also flooding, rapid urbanization, high population densities, these are all things that are very common to the Netherlands.
You could say that delta areas all over the world started to look more like the Netherlands in a certain way with the water threats and things that are happening there. So in that sense, of course, the Dutch example provides a really interesting inspiration how the Dutch are dealing with this water threat in the past, but also with new innovations such as floating.
At the same time, I think also that from the Netherlands we can also learn a lot from other countries.
So because our flood system is quite well developed after the big flood disaster last century in 1953, I think we haven't had many floods anymore in our country. So many people also take the flood safety for kind of for granted. And I think if we're looking at other countries where people more often experience flood, we also see that on a personal level, people are much more resilient than we are in the Netherlands because they're more used to deal with flooding. For instance, in countries like Bangladesh, I think people are much more flood adaptive, let's say, on a, on a personal level, in dealing with floods than we are because we think, well, the government built our dike systems and flood defense systems and we're safe. At least that's what many people think.
So I also think there's a. There's a lot to learn also from other countries. And of course other countries could learn from us. And I think there's also a process that's really needed because at the end of the day, we are dealing with similar challenges. Climate change, change impact, extreme weather, flood risk, and we need to learn from each other.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Yes, it's interesting. I mean, obviously there's a lot to learn and Everything is so accelerated, obviously, at the moment. Now, something you've spoken about, Rukar, is water as an opportunity rather than a threat. Can you expand a little bit on this concept and how it translates into urban design?
[00:20:08] Speaker B: Yes, certainly. So, as I said, most of the cities are located along the coast and are dealing with land scarcity. And a big part of our planet is the water. So if we try to solve all our challenges on the land, it's going to be difficult, but the water offers opportunity. Coastal cities can expand on the water with floating housing. But also these floating urban expansions could be surrounded with floating seaweed and algae Systems, taking out CO2 from the atmosphere, using also the nutrient, the waste nutrients of the coastal cities in a productive way, producing biofuels.
So I think the water offers a lot of opportunities, not only for housing, but also for decentralized food production, decentralized energy production, so that we also not only adapt to the effects of climate change, but that we also address the root causes of climate change. We want to prevent further climate change, and at the same time, it's happening already today, so we also need to adapt. Those are two sides of the same coin, as I always call it. It's not an either or question.
Sometimes people ask me, yeah, you're floating cities, so, yeah, you've given up on CO2 reduction. I say, no, CO2 reduction remains very important. Sustainable energy transition remains very important. I also think that floating cities can offer a great opportunity to test those technologies and develop them further. But even if we stop emitting CO2 tomorrow, climate change will continue for decades. And that's the reality that we need to deal with.
So I think we need to do both. And the nice thing is that in floating urban development, we can do both because it's a great, literally innovation platform where all sorts of decentralized sustainable energy technologies can be implemented.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: So, I mean, one of the questions I had for you, but I think you've answered it really on, you know, over a couple of different questions, is what are the most urgent actions cities could take to ensure water resilience over the coming decades?
[00:22:13] Speaker B: We're living in uncertain times from a societal perspective, but also climate change is not uncertain that it is happening, but the magnitude and how bad it's going to be.
So what the exact sea level rise is going to be and what extreme weather impacts will be, we don't exactly know yet. The only thing we know is that every time we get an update on the prediction, things are getting worse. And I think when you're dealing with uncertainty, there's things happening in the world that we could not have imagined 10 years ago. I think in terms of acceleration and times of uncertainty, it's very important to be flexible so that you can adapt. Because if you cannot predict what's going to happen 10 or 20 years from now, the best thing you can do is to be very flexible. And I think floating urban development offers a great tool to be very flexible.
So you can have a floating neighborhood now, but maybe 20 years, you might want to do something else at that location. Maybe you want to build a port or turn it back into nature.
That will be very difficult with land based urban development because once something is a city, it will never revert back. But with floating, that is possible. You could just move the floating neighborhood to a new location and do something else at the original location. So I think flexibility and adaptability are great assets when we're trying to make ourselves resilient to uncertain future developments.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: I guess as humans we have to backtrack and realize that, you know, our needs, our commercial needs, which are around housing, no longer need to be permanent. That would probably be like a great shift if we could manage that.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: I think so too. And also I think land ownership, because land ownership, well, that's of course also a lot of good impacts. But also I think land ownership is one of the reasons why we have a global housing crisis and it's one of the reason why it is difficult to provide enough housing. When you're living in a floating house, you're not that interested in land ownership because yeah, the land is far down there at the bottom of the sea and yeah, and you might want to move at a certain point with your house to another location. So I think that abandoning land ownership and going more to another model. So when I'm living in a floating house, I'm mostly interested in a permission to be with my house at a certain location. Sure, that's the most interesting thing. And also, ideally, if I don't like my neighbors or I want to move, I get a job somewhere else, I can move with my house to another place. That would be the perfect idea. And then land ownership would actually be an obstacle for me to do that. So we've been thinking about a different system where flexible permitting, where you get a permit to, to be at a certain location with your floating neighborhood in return for certain environmental services.
Okay, say that I have a floating neighborhood and I get permission of a coastal city to be at a certain location. And in return with my floating LG system, I take out a certain amount of CO2 from the atmosphere or I improve the water quality. And then with dynamic permitting, you could monitor that with underwater drones and sensors. And as long as you have a positive impact on the environment, you have a permit to be there.
And the moment you no longer have that, the moment you start to pollute, you get a notice and you get maybe one or two years to improve that. But, well, if you don't do that at a certain point, you no longer have the permit with your floating house to be there.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: I love that concept.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: That would be much more. Yeah, that would be much more flexible. It would also take out a lot of fear that spatial planners have because spatial planners are always very cautious. And that's also understandable because the moment they permit something, they can never revert it back again.
But with floating you can, you can just say, okay, you get a permit for 20 years on the condition that you still have this positive environmental impact.
If you no longer have that, you'll get two years to fix it. And then if not, yeah, we're going to look together for another place and maybe in a port area where it's less vulnerable or something else. But that would create a much more dynamic way of urbanism. So no longer based on land ownership, but much more about flexible interaction with the environment.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I love that concept. Now obviously nature based solutions are so important at this time, like wetlands, green roofs, water plazas and so on. And they're complementing the technological interventions that are part of urban water management. How do you see some of those kind of solutions?
[00:26:48] Speaker B: I'm also a great fan nature based solutions and I think they can be combined really well with, with floating urban development. And we have also done studies on the, as I said, the floating algae and seaway systems. And I think using living with the water and using basically the qualities of nature. Yeah, they can, they have much in common. I think so. In the Netherlands we have a descent engine. We have also nature development, but also things like mangroves and other solutions. I think they could be very. There could be really interesting combinations between floating and these nature based solutions. I think it's their complementary strategies in a certain way.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: Definitely. Yeah, I agree with that entirely. Now going back to a topic that we did touch on earlier. Climate adaptation obviously faces a lot of political and economic barriers. What policy shifts, I know is a huge question, but what policy shifts are needed to accelerate the adoption of resilient water based solutions, in your opinion?
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I think a start. Of course, everything starts with awareness and that's also one of the reasons why I'm happy to be in this podcast. And I've been telling this story for almost 20 years now.
And every day I meet people that hear the story for the first time. So if people don't know about this solution, they will not take it into their strategy and their resilience strategy and their spatial planning strategy. So there's still a lot of awareness building to be done. I'm speaking at international conferences and trying to spread the word and there's also some great colleagues that also try to do that, also of other companies in the Netherlands and other countries as well. So I think, yeah, building more awareness for the solutions is step one. Then of course, it needs to be associated by cities that they can understand what's in it for them, that they really start understanding that how floating cities, floating urban development, floating solution could help them. And then I think it's very important that it becomes part of spatial planning strategy, becomes part of resilience strategies, because if it's not part of that policy making, it's going to be very difficult to implement these kind of solutions. So that's the next step. And then the third step is really providing the capacity and the knowledge and the technologies to really also do it in practice.
So I think it's a kind of a three step, maybe even four. But it starts with awareness, then it really starts about the implementation and then really the execution and building.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: We see the other topic that's really important is money. Are there any specific funding models, public private partnerships, etc. That have been particularly effective in implementing these floating urban projects?
[00:29:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think making these kind of projects really safe and profitable investments also for larger investors is still a very big step that we need to do. And we see that families in the Netherlands, they have been successful, successful in getting mortgages on floating housing.
Although I must say that there's many banks that don't want to do it. And often it's a longer process to get a mortgage with a reasonable interest rate, for instance, compared to a house on the land, which in a certain way. Yeah, in a certain way. It's also surprising because we see that the land, houses on the land, they face increasingly a more severe flood damage.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: That's it. That's why I'm like, that's interesting. It doesn't make sense, does it? On some levels, yes.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: And I also think that if you see what happened recently in Florida and also in Spain, huge flooding, I think it will become increasingly difficult for insurance companies to keep on insuring real estate on the land.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: And they're already talking about it, that they cannot do it anymore. Well, then the government needs to step in. But if it happens every year, it's also going to be difficult. So I think at a certain point, and that can be much sooner than we all think, I think it will become very clear that floating housing and floating urban development is a less risky option for investors and insurance companies than building in floodplains and very vulnerable areas.
And I think the moment that that perception is really landing, I think that's going to be the big game changer, because then I think it's going to be very rapidly and at the moment, still big institutional investors, pension funds, are still investing in real estate on the land. But if they see their portfolios being severely impacted by extreme weather and climate impacts, I think they will discover that floating urban development might be the safest options on the table, actually, if engineered properly. I think that's very important. You do need to. So we're engineering for the most extreme storm conditions, the most extreme wave conditions.
But if you do that in a proper way, floating urban development can be much safer than the alternative on the land.
[00:31:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I can totally see that. Now. Are you engaging policymakers and urban planners, and if so, what are you doing to try and engage with them?
[00:31:50] Speaker B: Yeah, so one really interesting project that we have started is the Floating Future Research project in the Netherlands. I started this together with the Maritime Research Institute in the Netherlands. And this is a really interesting consortium consisting of universities, research institutes, but also government agencies on a ministerial level, but also on city level.
We have water boards, but we also have companies, NGOs, and even also a couple of investors on board.
And so we're discussing with them together what are the obstacles and how can we deal with that. We want to scale up floating urban development.
So, yeah, we have started that process talking to political leaders, policymakers, but also the private sector and the financial sector. And we hosted. Two weeks ago, we organized our first investor roundtable on floating solutions in the Egg. Okay, so we're starting to build that network. So we're building. We're building an ecosystem, a knowledge ecosystem. So it's not. You cannot solve it only from a company perspective. You cannot solve it only from a government perspective. You can start an NGO or you. But you need all of those. You need to bring all of them together, and then everybody has a piece of the puzzle. And then together we try to make it work around concrete case studies in Rotterdam, in Amsterdam, on the North Sea, inland lakes, so we have different case studies where we work together with these stakeholders.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: Okay, it's really fascinating stuff. So how long would it be? Like, just throwing the question out there, how long, in your opinion, would it be for a person like myself who lives in Spain, not far from where the floods happened in Valencia, how long would it be before I could say, okay, we'd like to get involved in having a floating development or floating home. When will that happen for people, do you think?
[00:33:46] Speaker B: So, so what we have done, we have studied, let's say, the technology dynamics of previous large technical transitions.
And they all. So. So how did cars distribute over the world? How did mobile phones? How did the process go? Electricity, you name it. And we see that. And a computer, the personal computer, Internet, how did it dissipate? And they all. The dynamics are always very similar. So it starts really slow. You have a really long trajectory where there's a niche developing this technology.
Then you see a takeoff moment where really people start to adopt the technology. And then you have this exponential growth of technology until there's a certain saturation point.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: That's it. And before you know it, everybody has one.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: Exactly. And that's kind of the S curve. The S curve is a kind of standard in every MBA education. There's this S curve. But we have also studied this in quite detail. And based on that, we think, you know, that in a couple of decades, actually, this could just be applied globally.
And so certainly this century and probably within. And it's already happening. So we have also calculated what needs to happen to have a billion people living underwater this century, for instance. That's a really big question. So what needs to happen? So say that somewhere in 2050, what else? 2070, at least this century, billion people on the water. And of course, yeah, we're Delft engineers. So we started to calculate, and what needs to happen is that every decade the size of the floating development economic sector needs to increase with a factor of ten, which seems possible. So if I go to a contractor of floating housing and I know a couple of them, because of course, I work with them and say that they're able to build 100 floating houses per year at the moment. If I ask them, can you make a thousand ten years from now? They will say yes, because ten years, still quite a long time. And I say, well, if I can make 100 floating houses now, I certainly can make a thousand 10 years from now. Well, and then 10 years later, 10,000. And if you don't keep on going, you come up with hundreds of millions of floating housing still this century. So that's how fast it can go. And if you put that in a graph, you get this S curve that we have seen with mobile telephones. We have seen it with Internet, we have seen it with cars, with electricity, with all those technologies. And I think floating urban development can just be the next technology. And I think that we're. But I'm already saying this for a few years, to be honest, but I think we're really near the tipping point at the moment.
Why? Because there's been a lot of technological progress that makes the upscaling possible.
In our office, we already have the plans for floating factories that can make floating cities in five years with automated robot systems, production, automation, everything. So we already have all those plans on the shelf. So I think it can go really quickly.
And I think we're near the tipping point. And of course, an urgency. Every year the urgency gets, gets more and more. So we. I think the moment that this is going to break through globally, I think it's not too far in the future.
[00:36:56] Speaker A: Fascinating. It is absolutely fascinating. So, looking ahead, Rukar, what are the most exciting projects or innovations in floating cities and climate adaptation that you're currently working on?
[00:37:10] Speaker B: So I think one of the most fascinating things that we're doing right now is that we're working on the first social housing floating apartment complex here in the Netherlands.
And I think that's going to be one of those really game changers that's going to contribute to the tipping point. Because as I told you, I've been telling this story for 15 to 20 years now, a long time. And in half of the presentations that I give, maybe even more, whether it's in the Netherlands or anywhere else in the world, there's always the question from the audience, this is only for the rich.
And I show the floating villas and, and people think that, okay, the rich are going to escape through a floating neighborhood and then other people will be stuck on the land. That's kind of the narrative that people think. And then I always take the example of the mobile phone. I said, well, you know, the first mobile phones were really expensive. They were only bought by businessmen. But that opened a trajectory of technological improvement and cost effectiveness that made this technology much cheaper and at the end affordable for almost everyone.
That's what we're trying to do with floating as well. But, but yeah, yeah, you can talk about it, but it, you need to prove it. So that's what we're doing. So we're working with a consortium of companies in The Netherlands and also with the Social Housing Corporation and the municipality to make the first social housing floating apartment complex in the world with 40 apartments in one one building. The moment we have that, I think it's for the whole world to see that we can actually make this affordable and then I think it can go really quickly.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: That's really exciting. And do you have sort of an eta, an estimated target time for this?
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Yeah, so we're actually the preliminary design is finished this week and we're, we're quite far with housing Corporation, the municipality. So in our ideal world we would start building this this year, but else certainly next year. So there's a lot of momentum and people really want to do this.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: So I think that's something that in the Netherlands that we could show as an, as an example project of affordable social housing underwater.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: Wonderful.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: So I think that's, that's the most fascinating thing that we're doing in the Netherlands at the moment. And of course, yeah, we have also initiatives all over the world. There's also some really interesting examples there.
But yeah, this I think if I had to mention only one, I think this would be the one that I would mention.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, obviously in the show notes we're going to refer to your website and so on so people can have a good deep look around.
If you were to give advice regard to mayors and urban planners in flood prone cities, what is the one key message you'd want them to take away?
[00:39:54] Speaker B: Yeah, so what we see is that political leadership is one of the key factors to get floating urban project realized. And we studied this in great detail also with social scientists. So my message to Mares is that their vision and support is really instrumental to get the first floating projects realized. And the moment you have the first floating projects, more will follow. We saw this in Rotterdam. We had the mayor of Rotterdam, Eva Obstelt back then, we had just started this company, but he believed in our vision and he said, I want to have the floating pavilion in Rotterdam. That was the first floating project, big floating project in Rotterdam.
But that really helped putting Rotterdam on the map as really a front runner in climate adaptation. And the floating pavilion really became a global example of climate adaptation that even three years ago in 2022, it was mentioned by the IPCC as example project of climate transformative climate adaptation. I think that was a really big step. But what we have also seen after our floating pavilion, we saw a floating housing. There's the floating office of the Global center of Adaptation.
Even a floating farm is there floating solar so after such a first demonstrator, you see that if people see what's possible, more projects will follow. So that's really. But for that first project, I think political leadership and vision is instrumental to make that first step.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: Sure, yeah. Obviously vital to it. And Rotterdam, for people who aren't aware, is number two on the Sustainable Cities Index of 2024, which is created by Arcadis. That's pretty phenomenal achievement. Now, looking to the future, what gives you hope when it comes to urban resilience and adapting to climate change?
[00:41:45] Speaker B: Well, I really see what's hopeful. I think that it's really a movement. More and more people start to talk about it and not only floating, but also other technologies, of course. But when I started back in 2007, it was really still a very small group of what they called crazy Dutch engineers, but now it's global. So we see initiatives all over the world, in South Korea, in the Maldives, in the Middle east, in Europe, in the Baltic States. So what started as kind of a Dutch, very, very niche technology is now being discussed globally.
It's taken very seriously by entities, global entities such as Human Habitats, the Global center on Adaptation, the ipcc. So I think that what started as a crazy idea is now incorporated on the highest possible international policy level.
I also see how we have the World Conference on Floating Solutions where I see people from all over the world coming together to discuss this. Engineers, designers, scientists, policy makers, businessmen, investors. So I think, yeah, really, you see this, this, this field, this new field emerging. And I think that I'm always impatient. I think it's should go much faster, but it does. I'm hopeful in what I'm seeing and I think that, yeah, people have creative solutions and also the capabilities will really get things done and really make those kind of projects.
[00:43:18] Speaker A: Sure. Listen, it's exciting obviously, to hear you speak. You're very inspiring and, you know, it's lovely as just an average human being to think, well, yes, you know, so many of us love the sea. Okay. So we're adapting because of, you know, something that's very extreme and very frightening at the moment. But I, I think I would love to live on a floating residence. Why not? You know?
[00:43:41] Speaker B: Yes. Well, thank you for that and I think for sure, for me also, because if you, if you read the newspapers, you put on the news, sometimes you might feel a little bit depressed what's happening in the world. So I, I'm, I'm very fortunate that I can go to my work every day and work on a hopeful perspective for Humanity and really working on the solution and that keeps me very motivated already for quite some time. But also my colleagues, I'm not doing this just by myself. Blue 21, we're with 10 people. We have a new spin off called Square Floating City and that's really about the automated expansion of coastal cities where as a new spin off of Blue 21. So we have a, we have a team that's very specialized on this interdisciplinary and working on this solution every day with, with our clients and partners and people that we work with.
[00:44:33] Speaker A: So that's. Yeah, that's absolutely fantastic. So listen, I think we've covered a lot of ground, but are there anything that, you know, any points that you'd like to share at the end that maybe we didn't cover?
[00:44:45] Speaker B: I think most of the most important things I certainly think we have covered, maybe one thing is that floating urban development will also open an entirely new market for ecological technologies that once they have been implemented in floating cities, people will say, hey, why don't we do this on the land as well? So in that sense it's literally an innovation platform. It's a context in which you can, to give you a very simple example. So technically if you build a house in Spain, you can make it self supporting with regard to your drinking water.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: Water.
[00:45:18] Speaker B: So you can just collect rainwater, produce your own drinking water. In the Netherlands we can do that too. The technologies are available. But for instance, if you build a house on the land in the Netherlands, it's still legally you're obliged to connect it to the drinking water network.
You're legally obliged to connect it to the sewer network.
So these are all obstacles for technical innovation. The moment you move to the water, you don't have those obstacles. So it becomes very obvious that you're not going to connect your house to the, to the, to the shore. You're just going to implement your own decentralized biological wastewater treatment plant.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:45:53] Speaker B: The moment that creates a new market, these technologies will become cheaper and people on the land will also gonna say I also want these technologies in my house even though I'm living on the land. So it's a big catalyst of sustainable technology that flows floating apart from the climate adaptation. It can also really be a really big positive impact on sustainability transition in general.
[00:46:18] Speaker A: That's absolutely fantastic. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with everything you've said because that's stuff that we don't even think about right now, particularly people who are new to the concept of what you're doing. And although you know, and as you said yourself, and I understand that feeling of impatience when you have something so wonderful to offer to humanity. You know, you know about it and you're talking about it for 15 to 20 years. But obviously for the people who. It's a new concept to just grasping that at the beginning is, you know, is, is, is a lot and it's fascinating. But yes, it, it can be a catalyst for so much more good as well.
[00:46:52] Speaker B: I think so too. And also to, to, to, to expand even further on that technologically but also in terms of a more. Yeah. Strengthening democracy of local communities. So in the end it's about floating communities and I think on the land it's about. Well, we're basically consumers to keep the economy going and we can vote once in four years and every time we get more or less the same.
But citizens can be so much more. Citizens can co design their own living environment, they can produce their own energy, they can be involved in water treatment, they can make certain decisions together with their neighbors. So I also think that floating communities offer a great innovation context, enabling context for technological innovation, but also for governance innovation so that we, that we can, that citizens have much more capabilities than the society is using nowadays. It's, it's really passive for passive consumers. And in floating communities we really can become involved co producers. So that's a really different role. And I think that's also a really important aspect of floating communities.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think any community rukar is beneficial to humans because unfortunately we have become disconnected because of the nature of commercial life.
[00:48:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so too. And yeah, so there's a lot of interesting aspects to the concept of floating urban development from a technical point of view, from a social point of view, ecological point of view. And that's also one of the reasons why even though I'm working on it for quite some time now, I'm still every day fascinated by it.
[00:48:34] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it is, it's absolutely fascinating. So I'm very hopeful that I don't want to put a time point on it, but I'm very hopeful to be inviting you back on the podcast in the future with updates and to see you, you know, when this point arrives and that we'll have other discussions about what that has meant and where these developments are. And you know, I really believe in what you're doing. So I'm hoping that that won't be too, too long in the future.
[00:49:01] Speaker B: Absolutely. And I'm very welcome.
I will be very happy to, to report back about the progress that we're making. And. And hopefully I will have some really exciting news to share with you on your podcast in the future. So. So, yeah, looking forward to that.
[00:49:17] Speaker A: Thank you. It was really, really interesting. Rukar, thank you so much for your time.
[00:49:20] Speaker B: Thank you for a wonderful podcast. And it was my pleasure to be here and to explain a little bit about our work. Thank you very much.
[00:49:26] Speaker A: Thank you. This is constructive voices.
Courtesy of Blue21
