Dreaming of Underwater Cities

Will people ever live in underwater cities?

Japanese construction firm says it is possible by 2030. The visionaries revealed a $25 billion deep-sea eco-city plan called Ocean Spiral for 5,000 people that will produce energy from sea resources.

Many have pondered the idea of living under the sea while sci-fi film directors such as George Lucas tempted our imagination with stunning images of underwater cities. Such was the Gungan city consisting of a mass of hydrostatic bubbles shown in the first part of the “Star wars” epic space film series.

Now a Japanese construction firm Shimizu Corp. says that building an underwater residential area is not a fantasy and aims to build one by 2030 – in just 15 years.

“This is a real goal, not a pipe dream,” the Shimizu spokesman Hideo Imamura told the Guardian.
The outlandish plan envisages a spiral-shaped structure comprised of three major sections. Floating slightly above the surface the structure will be topped by a 500-meter sphere.

The central part is a spiral 15km long with room for business zones, residential areas and hotel rooms for about 5,000 people, according to the plan.

The design for the grandiose structure was determined jointly with researchers from University of Tokyo, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and the government’s Fisheries Research Agency.

Shimizu Corp is planning to use technologies it thinks will be plausible in the future such as an industrial-scale 3-D printer and to build the Ocean Spiral out of resin instead of concrete.
Construction costs are estimated by the company at 3 trillion yen ($25.6 billion) and the building phase is expected to take five years.

"It would be great if research institutions and governments become interested in our project," said Masaki Takeuchi, the manager of the project, as quoted by Asahi Shimbun.

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