When will we start to colonize the oceans and ease overpopulation?

Question

There is so much real estate potential and untapped resources available right now. What's holding back investors and engineers from financing and developing underwater cities?

Answer 1

You may want to check out the technical link below, but my first instinct is to ask: what would they do there?

Historically, cities have grown easiest around rivers, natural harbors etc - its cheaper to transport things via ship, generally, so good access to an ocean or river is a great advantage. But of course, cities don't absolutely need that, an overland trade route could work as well, or maybe there are natural resources close by...

So you'd have to first invent an entire transportation infrastructure for transporting masses of people to and from your sub-ocean metropolis. That's a chicken and egg proposition: its not enough to invent the technology, it has to be refined in practice, and mass-produced so as to reduce the costs.

That's a real barrier to developing the real estate - which, by the way, may not be so big as you think, it turns out that good locations for establishing a solid foundation, which your city would need, is pretty restricted - see below link.

As for resources? I don't know. Advocates of space colonization face similar problems as are posed in your question, but at least they can point to a lot of solid science that indicates there are enormous resources out there in the solar system. I'm sure there are resources under the ocean, but I need to ask you to be more specific about them before I could venture an answer.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

the expense of building a house that can withstand the pressure of the ocean is more than anyone would pay to buy it. This is assuming that the world is actually overpopulated. with the consumption and trash production habits in the US and europe, the entire planet cannot support those populations. at the consumption levels of the amish, the world can easily support 15 billion people.

Answer 3

Whats holdin people back is that we have tectonic plates in the earths core. Earthquakes create islands in the middle of the ocean. Thats why no Atlantis's or cities on top of the ocean.

Answer 4

The cost of developing underwater cities, you have to think about oxygen, food, construction, etc. way to expensive.

Answer 5

Outfully large investment cost, return would be too small..... not financially viable. If you could prove them that building a factory underwater would be better (say collecting gas or sea products) without pissing off the environmentalists.... then... who knows?

Answer 6

Probably never colonize the oceans...
Much easier to colonize deserts & currently un- inhabitable land...

Answer 7

Its already being done in places such as dubai. It is much easier, however to build manmade islands than to build underwater.