Waterstudio.NL has taken up the challenge of developing solutions to the problems posed by urbanization and climate change. Prognoses are that by 2050 about 70% of the world’s population will live in urbanized areas. 90% of the world’s largest cities are situated on the waterfront, we are forced to rethink the way we live with water in the built environment.  Given the unpredictability of future developments we need to come up with flexible strategies – planning for change. Our vision is that large-scale floating projects in urban environment provide a solution to these problems that is both flexible as well as sustainable.  We think that the full potential of floating developments will not be utilized directly however, and predict the following trends for the upcoming 50 years. 

Economic pressure and land prices in city centers often demand that old functions be demolished. The first step in water-based development  for the upcoming 10 years, is to relocate such functions from the centre to the waterfront. This provides space for more economically feasible developments.  We call this trading places.

A next step would be expanding urban fabric beyond the waterfront:  building normal urban configurations on water locations, with normal densities and usual typologies such as apartment-buildings, semi-detached housing etc. Water-based neighborhoods that look and feel just like traditional land-based  areas but just happen to have a floating foundation.

The full potential of floating developments opens up when we start thinking about dynamic city planning. Floating developments are highly flexible because buildings and even complete city-parts can easily be relocated to suit changing demands. We will move towards a dynamic approach to our building stock and start seeing our buildings as recyclable products with a second hand market.  We predict a dynamic and sustainable building strategy beyond the waterfront.

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