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Floating pods to provide relief in urban slums

By | November 25, 2012, 9:13 AM PST

Although every nation is likely to be affected by a warming planet, it’s the world’s poor that will suffer the most from climate change.

Particularly susceptible to rising sea levels are those who live in wet slums, or poor, densely populated areas of a city located near the water. To counter the challenges that those living in these areas face everyday, one architectural studio has come up with a solution: floating city pods.

Waterstudio, the world’s leader in floating architecture, has designed moveable floating urban structures to provide spaces for food, shelter and sanitation in city slums. Called City Apps, the buoyant pods are designed to satisfy specific urban needs and to fill gaps in the city’s infrastructure.

Since the Apps will be moveable, they can be transferred from city to city depending on need.

“City Apps are envisioned as products instead of projects which makes them reusable as they can be easily moved elsewhere once they are not needed,” the firm states on its website. “In this approach, City Apps are leased out to the local community.”

The undertaking recently won the 2012 Architecture & Sea Level Rise Award and the studio is planning to use the prize money to build its first set of Apps in Korail Wet Slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Images: Waterstudio

[via Wired]

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Sarah Korones

About Sarah Korones

Sarah Korones was a contributing editor for SmartPlanet from 2012 to 2013.

Sarah Korones

Sarah Korones

Contributing Editor

Sarah Korones is a freelance writer based in New York. She has written for Psychology Today and Boston's Weekly Dig. She holds a degree from Tufts University.

Follow her on Twitter.

Sarah Korones

Sarah Korones

Sarah Korones does not have financial holdings that would influence how or what she covers.

She writes for SmartPlanet and is not an employee of CBS.

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Well, there's a non sequitur.
"Although every nation is likely to be affected by a warming planet, its the worlds poor that will suffer the most from climate change."

Almost by definition, "the world's poor" will suffer the most from almost everything.
Posted by JohnMcGrew@...
26th Nov
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Will it really happen like this?
I believe climate change is caused by humans, but I also believe we have the power to reverse it or at least stop or slow it down. We have made our mistakes, but maybe, we can solve the problem of global warming. I do hope the world won't encounter a crisis, and instead will solve the problem and not create more.
Posted by Bo Seong
27th Nov
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Sadly, yes it really will happen.
We cannot reverse climate change because, even if every engine and electrical device were switched off right this second, there is a residual heating effect already built into the climate of the planet. This is similar to switching off an electric fire - the element continues to glow red for several minutes before slowly cooling. In the case of planetary climate, were are not talking about minutes for the cooling, we are talking centuries.

We also cannot stop it. The ice that has melted worldwide will not return just because we wish it so. It has gone forever. To try to reconstruct that ice using technology would cost far too much, if it was achievable at all.

So the best we can hope for is to slow it down. That means switching from making power by burning fossil fuels, to making power by using renewable technologies - and we need to do that as quickly as we possibly can. Other things, such as using less power, walking instead of driving, consuming less, will all help, but the vast majority of fossil fuels are consumed in providing power - electricity generation, heating and fuelling transport. That is where we need to make large-scale reductions.
Posted by MVK3J
1st Jan
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