Seasteading

Seasteading is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, outside the territory claimed by any government. The term is a combination of the words sea and homesteading.

Seasteaders say such autonomous floating cities will foster faster development of techniques "to feed the hungry, cure the sick, clean the atmosphere and enrich the poor". Some critics fear seasteads are designed more as a refuge for the wealthy to avoid taxes or other problems.

Proposed structures have included modified cruise ships, refitted oil platform, a decommissioned anti-aircraft platform, and custom-built floating islands. No one has yet created a state on the high seas that has been recognized as a sovereign state.

As an intermediate step, the Seasteading Institute has promoted cooperating with an existing nation to prototype floating islands that are legally semi-autonomous within the nation's protected territorial waters. On January 13, 2017, the Seasteading Institute signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with French Polynesia to create the first semi-autonomous "seazone". The "seazone" will be the location of a prototype seastead designed by marine engineering firm Blue 21.

Many architects and firms have created designs for floating cities, including Vincent Callebaut,Paolo Soleri and companies such as Shimizu and E. Kevin Schopfer.

Marshall Savage discussed building tethered artificial islands in his book The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps, with several color plates illustrating his ideas.

Other historical predecessors and inspirations for seasteading include:

At least two people independently coined the term seasteading: Ken Neumeyer in his book Sailing the Farm (1981) and Wayne Gramlich in his article "Seasteading – Homesteading on the High Seas" (1998).

Gramlich’s essay attracted the attention of Patri Friedman. The two began working together and posted their first collaborative book online in 2001. Their book explored many aspects of seasteading from waste disposal to flags of convenience. This collaboration led to the creation of the non-profit The Seasteading Institute (TSI) in 2008.

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