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Anybody remember this from '72?
Hawaii planning floating city
HONOLULU ( A P ) -
Fearing their idyllic islands will, be swamped by mass migrations of people from the
continental United States, Hawaiians are planning a modern, but away from it all city;
The city will embrace the high-density, three-dimensional approach with apartments
clustered and rising high into the sky, each with a view. Conveyor belts, elevators and a monorail system will move people. There will be nocars. Everything will be within 30 minutes' walking distance. There will be no pollution, no noise. Each family will have a continously changing view of the coastline of Hawaii's islan
Fearing their idyllic islands will, be swamped by mass migrations of people from the
continental United States, Hawaiians are planning a modern, but away from it all city;
The city will embrace the high-density, three-dimensional approach with apartments
clustered and rising high into the sky, each with a view. Conveyor belts, elevators and a monorail system will move people. There will be nocars. Everything will be within 30 minutes' walking distance. There will be no pollution, no noise. Each family will have a continously changing view of the coastline of Hawaii's islan
ds. For the city will rise out of
the sea. It will float. A l to 20 scale model of a city is floating now in Kaneohe Bay on Oahu's East shore. It was built of sheet metal, welded and bolted together by professors and students working on weekends. It was financed by an $85,000 federal grant. It's a community effort," said Joe E. Hanson, manager of the University of Hawaii's Floating City Project. He ticks off the local contributions; firms provided forklifts and trucks; the Navy supplied a tug to tow it; Honolulu Community College donatedstudent welders, and volunteer students and military divers gave f.heir time. The driving force behind the floating city idea is John Craven,
a University of Hawaii professor of ocean engineering and the state's marine affairs coordinator. He says "All I want to do is return the land to environmental use and put the high-density structures at sea. It is the hardest battle to make people understand that. Hawaii is a very desirable place to live, and stopping people from coming here is just kind of a vain hope." And, to make room for the increasing population Craven says will be double the present 770,000 persons by the year 2,000, work on the city continues. After completing tests on the 150-ton model, the next objective will be a two mile-long city for a marine exhibit in 1978, marking the bicentennial of the discovery of the Hawaiian islands by Capt. James Cook.
If all goes well, the exhibition city will float a few miles off Waikiki, permanently accommodating 2,000 persons, having enough hotel rooms for 8,000 overnight guests and handling 40,000 daily visitors. The design of the city grew out of a series of meetings among ocean engineering students, Craven and Japanese architect Kiyonori Kikutake. The key principle is that long pylons—huge bottles, really— extending deep intothe'ocean will provide sability enough so that you won't have to worry about getting seasick on the city, Craven said. Three of the giant, 350 bottles bolted together and supporting a platform will form a module, on which hotels and apartments will be built. Ten of the modules fitted
together will form the inner ring of the city. Craven hopes an additional 10 will be hooked on to the outside for the exhibition city. All but 40 feet of the bottles will be under water. They will be weighed down with ballast or other materials to give the city stability. There will be underwater hotels and restaurants in some. In future floating cities, they will be the sites of factories, sewage treatment plants and other facilities which do not rquire sunlight. Visitors would step off a ferry and take an elevator up apylon to get to the inner core of the city, a structure that will rise some 13 stories above sea level. A system of pulleys moored to the ocean floor will rotate the city and move it up and down a five-mile tract. It would be possible to watch the sun sink in the west and rise in the east from the same hotel room. The opposition has been such that Craven is pessimistic of quick public acceptancen and financing. He estimates that each module of the 20 unit exhibition city would coat $10 million. But he says that is much less than the price tag for similar structures on land. The cost of
tearing down and rebuilding inner cities would be excessive, he says, and hence to the sea, where engineers can start with fresh ideas.
the sea. It will float. A l to 20 scale model of a city is floating now in Kaneohe Bay on Oahu's East shore. It was built of sheet metal, welded and bolted together by professors and students working on weekends. It was financed by an $85,000 federal grant. It's a community effort," said Joe E. Hanson, manager of the University of Hawaii's Floating City Project. He ticks off the local contributions; firms provided forklifts and trucks; the Navy supplied a tug to tow it; Honolulu Community College donatedstudent welders, and volunteer students and military divers gave f.heir time. The driving force behind the floating city idea is John Craven,
a University of Hawaii professor of ocean engineering and the state's marine affairs coordinator. He says "All I want to do is return the land to environmental use and put the high-density structures at sea. It is the hardest battle to make people understand that. Hawaii is a very desirable place to live, and stopping people from coming here is just kind of a vain hope." And, to make room for the increasing population Craven says will be double the present 770,000 persons by the year 2,000, work on the city continues. After completing tests on the 150-ton model, the next objective will be a two mile-long city for a marine exhibit in 1978, marking the bicentennial of the discovery of the Hawaiian islands by Capt. James Cook.
If all goes well, the exhibition city will float a few miles off Waikiki, permanently accommodating 2,000 persons, having enough hotel rooms for 8,000 overnight guests and handling 40,000 daily visitors. The design of the city grew out of a series of meetings among ocean engineering students, Craven and Japanese architect Kiyonori Kikutake. The key principle is that long pylons—huge bottles, really— extending deep intothe'ocean will provide sability enough so that you won't have to worry about getting seasick on the city, Craven said. Three of the giant, 350 bottles bolted together and supporting a platform will form a module, on which hotels and apartments will be built. Ten of the modules fitted
together will form the inner ring of the city. Craven hopes an additional 10 will be hooked on to the outside for the exhibition city. All but 40 feet of the bottles will be under water. They will be weighed down with ballast or other materials to give the city stability. There will be underwater hotels and restaurants in some. In future floating cities, they will be the sites of factories, sewage treatment plants and other facilities which do not rquire sunlight. Visitors would step off a ferry and take an elevator up apylon to get to the inner core of the city, a structure that will rise some 13 stories above sea level. A system of pulleys moored to the ocean floor will rotate the city and move it up and down a five-mile tract. It would be possible to watch the sun sink in the west and rise in the east from the same hotel room. The opposition has been such that Craven is pessimistic of quick public acceptancen and financing. He estimates that each module of the 20 unit exhibition city would coat $10 million. But he says that is much less than the price tag for similar structures on land. The cost of
tearing down and rebuilding inner cities would be excessive, he says, and hence to the sea, where engineers can start with fresh ideas.
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