What Does town Mean
City , from the Latin civitas , is the urban area with a high population density , made up of inhabitants who do not usually engage in agricultural activities . The difference between cities and other urban entities is given by population density, legal status or other factors.
It should be mentioned that there is no precise definition of this term. According to the European Statistics Conference in Prague , for example, a city is an agglomeration of more than 5,000 inhabitants where less than 25% of the population is dedicated to agriculture .
Among the main characteristics of the cities is the predominance of collective and vertical housing ( buildings ), the developed transport and communication infrastructure and the scarce land allocated to green spaces.
The high population density, the high presence of cars and other vehicles and the few green spaces mean that cities tend to present levels of pollution that threaten health .
Large cities usually have a financial district, known as a city , which is home to the main financial institutions and the headquarters of large companies. It is common for these financial districts to receive millions of people coming for work every day , and very few people live there permanently.
The Tokyo metropolitan area , with about 35,000,000 inhabitants, is considered the largest megacity in the world. Seoul (24,000,000), Mexico (22,000,000), New York (21,800,000), Bombay (21,100,000), Delhi (20,800,000) and São Paulo (20,300,000) are other cities more densely populated.
Lilypad, the self-sufficient floating city
The warming caused by our pollution and the consequent melting of glaciers raise sea level up to 90 centimeters over the current century. This situation is so serious that if the temperature rises by just one degree centigrade, this could lead to a one meter rise in sea level.
What would happen if there were such an increase? Many regions with high levels of population density would be submerged; some parts of the Netherlands, India and Bangladesh are just three examples of potential victims of this massive flood . If, on the other hand, the sea level rose two meters, the scope of the catastrophe would be much greater, so much as to turn New York, Miami, Alexandria and Bombay, among others, into new Venice , with terrible consequences on the plane. economic and with a balance greater than 250 million homeless people, who could no longer return to their own, for which they would inevitably need to be relocated.
Taking into account these terrifying data, an architect of Franco-Belgian origin named Vincent Callebaut devised a floating city, under the name of "Lilypad", which promises to be energy clean and self-sufficient. One of its objectives is to expand the territory of countries located on the coasts, a task that some artificial archipelagos currently fulfill; on the other hand, it would serve to give a new home to the millions of climate refugees.
Each Lilypad would have sufficient capacity to house more than 50 thousand people, and would be built around a lake submerged, which would supply the water rain. It would lead to the establishment of private homes, offices and even shopping centers; all aboard an island whose course would be decided by the wind and the currents of the sea.
On the other hand, three ports would keep it communicated with the rest of the world, and the suspended gardens and orchards that would cover it would allow the cultivation of food, ensuring its inhabitants sufficient resources to spend their entire lives there .
Finally, its name comes from English and refers to the water lilies, from which it would also take its appearance, with a size 250 times greater.