Climat change is continuing its advance. Sea levels are set to rise further. How can we respond? We need space, space for water, space for people and building on water, building beyond the waterfront（滩） is a very logical step. Are floating cities one possible answer to the challenges of climate change? Technically you can do a lot.

  We have platforms here sometimes that survive hurricanes. Climate friendly and resource efficient. Is living on water a viable（能养活的） solution? Floating technology, we need it now at scale and affordable. Many people dream of living by the water and most big cities are located on the coast or by rivers. But the intergovernmental panel on climate change says the world must brace（支撑） itself for a one to two meter rise in sea levels by the year 2100.

  Yet our cities continue to expand. Could we soon be living on the water? It's an idea that architects have been pursuing for decades. Big architects have played with this theme. But I think the changes now that you go from dream to reality is because of the necessity. Because now with the whole urbanization（都市化） with climate change, we really need new solutions.

  Kuhn old house has committed himself to realizing this vision and has designed over 300 floating buildings following the example of this hotel from the 1980s. But the idea of a floating neighborhood as an extension of an existing city has yet to really catch on. We see water as the ideal location where we can grow our cities and make（使） it more safe but also cheaper to build. If you have to protect your city with all these big walls for maybe 10 or 15 extra meters in the next 100 years, then it's better to already build on top of the water because that saver you can just move up and down with it. Without coastal（海滨的） defenses, one third of the Netherlands（荷兰（西欧国家）） would be underwater. But it's a complex feat（技艺）.

  The huge mace land barrier protects the Rotterdam region from storm surges（巨涌）. Each gate is equivalent to the Eiffel Tower in terms of weight and size. And Germany too has been steadily raising the height of levees over the last few decades. The danger doesn't just come from the sea, but rivers too. It's not just only about space or the fact that you can go up and down with the water and save, it's also the flexibility（灵活性）. We really think that our society is changing so rapidly, political changes, technical changes, and a city has to act to the new situation.

  The cities are very slow. If you build a building, it stays for 50 years or 70 years, so you can't change it. But on water, we can react very, very fast. Alt-House and his team have designed the world's first floating city in the Maldives. 5,000 detached homes for 20,000 people interconnected（相互联系） via roads, canals and bridges. The ideal situation is that we can just float them out, rotate（旋转） them and as a boat take them out to the main docks and change them and bring them back.

  Maintenance（维护） is more challenging than it would be on land. The bridges will probably need to be repaired every 20 years. But replacing them is not easy, as the city's utilities（实用） are interconnected（相互联系） and run beneath（在……下面） the roads, bridges and houses. The houses float on pontoons that go down about 1.2 meters into the sea. The price itself of a house to construct a house is maybe a little bit more expensive than building a land because you have your floating foundation. But if you talk about the development cost of these kind of structures, it's less because the price of land below water is of course less than land in the middle of the city.

  So the total development can be much more affordable than building a land and that's necessary because we don't want to build only for the rich. If you really want to solve problems in cities, same as in Malé, you have to build affordable housing. The capital of the Maldives, Malé. With its population of 250,000 people spread across just 8 square kilometers, it's bursting（使爆裂） at the seams（接缝）. It's not unusual for a family of 10 to share a two-room apartment. The tropical heat is hard to bear without air conditioning.

  But Malé continues to draw people from the smaller, more remote, outlying（边远的） islands as it offers better healthcare, education and job opportunities. I think Maldives feels the environment impact most from the world. And we've seen a tsunami and we've seen the sea level rise every day and it's a need for us to expand the population in the small islands. So people started believing, wanting to see an alternative for reclamation（开垦） or more safe way of expanding life on the sea in the Maldives. So we believe this is the right time it will be viable and also practical. Fifteen minutes away from the capital by boat, a private company called Dutch（荷兰人） Docklands is building the floating city in a 200 hectare（公顷） lagoon（[地理][水文] 泻湖） of a coral reef.

  The first four homes have just been completed. With a price tag of 250,000 euros for a house with an area of 220 square meters of floor space, they're also an option for the island's middle classes. Concealed（把…隐藏起来） underneath the wooden houses, there is modern technology, such as a greywater recycling plant for watering the trees. Only time will tell how the sensitive ecosystem of the coral reef responds to the houses mooring, the traffic and altered currents. Those involved say the city will be environmentally friendly and climate neutral. This is exactly how it looks like.

  We have single storey or two storey houses. We have sand on the street. We will generate electricity from solar or other turbines under the sea and we will use the sea water to cool systems. Water drawn from the deep sea with a temperature of 7 degrees Celsius is fed through the walls. By removing the necessity for air conditioning, energy consumption can be reduced by 60 percent. Wind and wave power cover the other energy needs.

  This city has everything a city has, like football grounds, mosques, offices, everything. That's how when our parents lived, we could go fishing, we could jump into the water when we want, we don't need to taxi to see the sea, all that kind of thing. So this is more like a village but used building modern technology. A beautiful high-tech floating city that responds to the challenges of climate change. A seemingly（看来似乎） seductive vision. I'm not very optimistic about how quickly we will be able to adapt.

  Is the technology like floating technology mature（使成熟） to be able to be used in countries where most of our country is the vast ocean? So it's an interesting idea but I am very hesitant（迟疑的） to believe that that is the solution for climate change because the real issues that we're trying to address is reducing our carbon emissions. The Maldives are confronted（使面临） with the impact of climate change caused primarily by other countries. Malay no longer has a proper beach. The capital of the island is surrounded by concrete coastal defences as it lies only half a metre above sea level. The government already spends 30% of its budget on adapting to climate change, yet it badly needs the money for schools, hospitals and roads.

  I don't want to see a country that is uninhabitable（不适宜居住的） in my lifetime and if things go business as usual that could be a possibility but I still want to think that there still is time for us to reverse（颠倒） this and save countries like us. At 1.1 degrees today we are experiencing coastal erosion（腐蚀） on every single island. Every single island in the Maldives where Maldivians live have run out of fresh water.