IDENTITY: constitutive and administrative considerations
In the context of New Urbanism, an Urban Village is a planning and design concept mainly characterized by a pursuit to achieve mixed-use, human-scale developments, comprised of tight-knit, self-involved village sized communities, with a compact city focus and of sustainable size. These autonomous amalgamations of leisure, shopping, community and housing uses would recall a sense of proto-industrial pastoral wholesomeness, with all amenities within easy walking distance and non-invasive transportation.
It amounts to literally building everything from the ground up around the notion of enabling and nurturing a sustainable community. Therefore the term of “Urban Village” appears to translate well to the proposed building blocks of the Mirror City: its self-contained autonomous floating islands.
In the context of New Urbanism, an Urban Village is a planning and design concept mainly characterized by a pursuit to achieve mixed-use, human-scale developments, comprised of tight-knit, self-involved village sized communities, with a compact city focus and of sustainable size. These autonomous amalgamations of leisure, shopping, community and housing uses would recall a sense of proto-industrial pastoral wholesomeness, with all amenities within easy walking distance and non-invasive transportation.
It amounts to literally building everything from the ground up around the notion of enabling and nurturing a sustainable community. Therefore the term of “Urban Village” appears to translate well to the proposed building blocks of the Mirror City: its self-contained autonomous floating islands.
Urban Villages as they exist today in architectural theory and practice have some significant differences to the desired floating islets that constitute the Mirror City constellation: they are single core, simplistic entities, whereas each Mirror City Islet has a number of equally significant public building cores as focal points to all local island neighborhoods; Each conventional Urban Village is thought of as a self-contained, small scale collective. The Villages are ultimately all clones of each other. Their focus is on leisured retreat and not competitive interdependence, as they are not designed from the ground up to be parts of a consistent greater whole. Ultimately the Urban Villages become a reinvention of suburbia, as a coagulation of the homogenous urban sprawl into a mimicry of traditional village typologies – evolutionary cul-de-sacs, modernized self-sufficient variations on the suburban gated communities.
On the other hand The Mirror City Islets are physically autonomous, socially interdependent entities. Albeit structurally similar, they are designed to compete and complement each other functionally and administratively, as constituting parts of a general Urban Master Plan. There is only one city present - the greater floating city, part of the land-and-sea metropolis -, wherein the islets are diverse amalgamations of neighborhoods, segregated into physically autonomous bodies of sustainable size. Surely the islets may function independently for a while, offshore in a new location, but are meant to work in numbers and synergistically as complementing parts of the greater floating city.
Financial and demographic considerations
Building the floating city is determined mainly by a combination of necessity and incentives. This chapter discusses the incentives.
Each or the three Islet levels is designed in such a way that they can pay for themselves. What they have to offer is: public spaces for cultural events and numerous leisure activities and their facilities on the Macrostructure, business ventures opportunities on the vast Walkways level, and state of the art residencies inside the Superstructures – all on the first of its kind landmark waterfront, downtown.
As an alternative to a single developer building everything and then selling and renting the entire Islet bit by bit, one easily identifies four possible parties, paying to make the project float: the permanent residents (the Islanders), the public/private investors, the renting business owners, and the visitors. If each Islet would be a simple gated community, then the added costs of the Macrostructure, Infrastructure and residential Superstructures would go into the apartment prices. It is not the case here, as the public and private sectors play major roles in the construction and capitalization of the complex. While the Flyer Superstructures are mostly bought and paid for by the permanent residents, the business oriented Walkway Level and the leisured Macrostructure advertises themselves as new landmark real estate just across from the old downtown waterfront, open to any interested public or private business interests.
The public Macrostructure: The major player on this level is the municipality (and/or other private investors). Islanders, land residents and tourists alike are the recipients of the nature parks, beaches, marinas, culture domes and public facilities.
Building the floating city is determined mainly by a combination of necessity and incentives. This chapter discusses the incentives.
Each or the three Islet levels is designed in such a way that they can pay for themselves. What they have to offer is: public spaces for cultural events and numerous leisure activities and their facilities on the Macrostructure, business ventures opportunities on the vast Walkways level, and state of the art residencies inside the Superstructures – all on the first of its kind landmark waterfront, downtown.
As an alternative to a single developer building everything and then selling and renting the entire Islet bit by bit, one easily identifies four possible parties, paying to make the project float: the permanent residents (the Islanders), the public/private investors, the renting business owners, and the visitors. If each Islet would be a simple gated community, then the added costs of the Macrostructure, Infrastructure and residential Superstructures would go into the apartment prices. It is not the case here, as the public and private sectors play major roles in the construction and capitalization of the complex. While the Flyer Superstructures are mostly bought and paid for by the permanent residents, the business oriented Walkway Level and the leisured Macrostructure advertises themselves as new landmark real estate just across from the old downtown waterfront, open to any interested public or private business interests.
The public Macrostructure: The major player on this level is the municipality (and/or other private investors). Islanders, land residents and tourists alike are the recipients of the nature parks, beaches, marinas, culture domes and public facilities.
The public and semi-public Walkways: A good measure of seasonal small business from outside the Islet, rent the new waterfront property at a premium. The Islanders themselves also trade on the Walkway levels. Necessary administrative facilities are permanently located on this level.
The private and semi-public Flyers: Apartments privately owned and servicing the Islanders. Also other spaces such vertical subsistence gardens, gyms, libraries, ateliers, hotel, open restaurant.
This general purposing model of the three prototype Islet levels, is to some extent flexible and open to interpretation, as long as heavy pedestrian traffic is kept midway between a waterline green level and a sky private level, as this is the spirit of the place.
The permanent size of an Islet (or at least initial, as the Islet can be augmented at any future date), is dictated by the number of residential superstructures that the Islet in question will incorporate in its initial design – the Flyers in this case -, and their size. In the present case of the prototype Borough Islet there are six Flyer superstructures, with two apartment wings each x 7 floors x 7 apartments per floor. That amounts to 588 apartments x 4 max. occupants = 2352 Islet residents as permanent inhabitants, or Islanders.
Each Islet, as a village-sized administrative district of the larger Floating City, requires a number of public and semipublic buildings to function. For its size, the prototype Borough Islet will incorporate for the Islanders alone, an elementary school, local convenience stores and services. As more Islets are added to the floating city, the population increase will consequently demand a greater diversity of public services. Five to eight interconnected Islets will have the equivalent capacity of a town (12.500 – 20.000 people), which needs a high-school, light industry, a civic center, that will be spread among the Islets. The equivalent of five to eight towns congregated on the waterfront already constitute a city (80.000 - 130.000 people), which translates into additional public functions, such as a city centre, hospital, community colleges and heavy industry.
The numbers and functions discussed in this paragraph regard the Flyer superstructures and the Islanders exclusively, and may physically reflect across all three levels of the Islet, not just inside of the Superstructures. Nevertheless, the Islet’s other two levels, the Macrostructure and the business Walkways, are designed to work as part of the extended Metropolis (Land City + Floating City), meaning that the constant influx of commercial and touristic interest from the mainland will manifest itself into the structure and functionality of the respective levels, by having them permanently incorporate added public (cultural and administrative) and semi-public (business and services) functionality. This design philosophy sets the Borough Islet further apart from a Triton City floating unit
ADRESSING PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCERNS
“HIGH ABOVE GROUND AND ALL WAVES, SLEEP PEACEFULLY, OUT OF REACH FROM ANY WORRIES”The floating Mirror City is not meant for the forerunners, the brave, the few. It is meant to make wanting a place there come naturally to anybody and everybody. Actually, of all the things that come to mind when considering moving in on one of the Islets, “safe” should be as absent as “dangerous”. What would the subconscious retort, should we ask ourselves: “would I buy my apartment in that floating block of flats?”. It would whisper back many things at the same time and surely one of the louder ones will be: not sitting firmly on the ground but floating? Give it enough time and one night, years from now, it will sink while you and your family are asleep and helpless.
The reality of a natural fear of drowning is a good enough reason to acknowledge it, dissect it and to placate it ahead of time. Much of the reluctance of migrating en masse to waterborne dwellings has its roots in the fact that at sea, everything everywhere has a very long way down to the bottom. And while nowadays only very few individuals painstakingly avoid setting foot on ships and anything else that floats, that number increases dramatically when people are supposed to sleep as well for a number of nights, on water. Cruise ships are popular and accepted because their kind has been tried and tested over centuries, and proven to be sufficiently safe. No cruise ship guest believes that an accident will happen to them during the few days and nights that they are at sea (although plenty of them still secretly fear it), in the same way that they are mostly confortable with flying: Statistically it’s perfectly safe, therefore it cannot happen, “particularly not to them".
“Probability” is at fault for where the mind goes when it multiplies that one flight every second month, or those ten nights on the Allure of the Seas, to 365 times per year, times 50 years left to living, times 600.000 wanted inhabitants to the floating Mirror City. Furthermore, while Cruises and now Flying are established, living on the sea, even if it’s close to shore, is a lifestyle only just emerging. The selling point “HIGH ABOVE GROUND AND ALL WAVES, SLEEP PEACEFULLY, OUT OF REACH FROM ANY WORRIES”, dispels the fear before you realize it’s there. The structure follows.
“HIGH ABOVE GROUND AND ALL WAVES, SLEEP PEACEFULLY, OUT OF REACH FROM ANY WORRIES”The floating Mirror City is not meant for the forerunners, the brave, the few. It is meant to make wanting a place there come naturally to anybody and everybody. Actually, of all the things that come to mind when considering moving in on one of the Islets, “safe” should be as absent as “dangerous”. What would the subconscious retort, should we ask ourselves: “would I buy my apartment in that floating block of flats?”. It would whisper back many things at the same time and surely one of the louder ones will be: not sitting firmly on the ground but floating? Give it enough time and one night, years from now, it will sink while you and your family are asleep and helpless.
The reality of a natural fear of drowning is a good enough reason to acknowledge it, dissect it and to placate it ahead of time. Much of the reluctance of migrating en masse to waterborne dwellings has its roots in the fact that at sea, everything everywhere has a very long way down to the bottom. And while nowadays only very few individuals painstakingly avoid setting foot on ships and anything else that floats, that number increases dramatically when people are supposed to sleep as well for a number of nights, on water. Cruise ships are popular and accepted because their kind has been tried and tested over centuries, and proven to be sufficiently safe. No cruise ship guest believes that an accident will happen to them during the few days and nights that they are at sea (although plenty of them still secretly fear it), in the same way that they are mostly confortable with flying: Statistically it’s perfectly safe, therefore it cannot happen, “particularly not to them".
“Probability” is at fault for where the mind goes when it multiplies that one flight every second month, or those ten nights on the Allure of the Seas, to 365 times per year, times 50 years left to living, times 600.000 wanted inhabitants to the floating Mirror City. Furthermore, while Cruises and now Flying are established, living on the sea, even if it’s close to shore, is a lifestyle only just emerging. The selling point “HIGH ABOVE GROUND AND ALL WAVES, SLEEP PEACEFULLY, OUT OF REACH FROM ANY WORRIES”, dispels the fear before you realize it’s there. The structure follows.