DeJonckheere: Segue City Program Proposal

After my conclusions from the mapping project, I have proposed four sites where I feel the creation of an offshore segue city would benefit the exchange of goods and movement of passengers throughout the globe. These sites are: Los Angeles, New York, the North Sea and the East China/Yellow Sea. I find the site in the North Sea especially interesting and plan to focus on this site especially for the purposes of this project.

Program of the Segue City—The Segue Cities will be transportation hubs for all major transportation networks supplying a fairly large area, in this case, most of north western and north Eastern Europe. The Segue City will consist of a central island, envisioned now to be and artificial island constructed in a similar fashion to the Kansai Airport (see earlier post). The central hub island would serve as a gateway airport to the larger served region, it would provide living areas for workers and their families in the Segue City and it would provide a ring of transportation connecting the spokes of the City described next. Below the surface of the central island, a rail network will gather, distribute and transport goods to and from the mainland. The second major component of the City will be the spokes that radiate from the central hub. These arms will be massive docking piers for all ships that would generally crowd the ports of the surrounding mainland. Goods will pass from the ship directly to the rail and interstate networks of the European continent. The arms radiating from the central hub are foreseen as floating island units. As demand for shipping increases, more units can be attached to the hub. I have researched a material called pykrete to perhaps serve as the main construction of the shipping islands. Pykrete is a material invented during WWII created with a simple mixture of wood pulp and sea water. In WWII, the Royal Navy suggested building a super aircraft carrier, the Habbakuk of pykrete which was discovered to have similar structural properties to concrete while floating like an iceberg. This link to the Habbakuk project further discusses the material.