can this floating and smart healthcare city in japan turn oceans into a new economic zone?

n-ark envisions ‘dogen city’ powered by a ‘new ocean’ model 

With climate change taking a turn for the worst, the earth is witnessing an alarming shift in rising sea levels, pushing countries to explore oceans and seas as new habitable ‘grounds’. As such, floating cities have taken center stage in recent years — take Estudio Focaccia Prieto’s ‘polimeropolis‘ or BIG’s floating city for Busan as examples. Much like THE LINE in Saudi Arabia, building such cities from scratch comes with its own extraordinary opportunities and challenges. Following these footsteps, Japanese maritime startup N-ARK recently announced its plans to develop a floating and smart healthcare metropolis dubbed ‘Dogen City’. This innovative proposal will integrate food production, architecture, data, energy, and ocean into one symbiotic system which utilizes maritime waters as a new and resilient economic zone called ‘NEW OCEAN’. 

all images courtesy N-ARK

‘Through private ocean business innovation, we will start the ‘NEW OCEAN Consortium,’ a joint business of industry, academia, and government that integrates various industries, technologies, and laws and regulations toward realizing this economic space. ‘NEW OCEAN’ is a term intended for the ocean version of the private space business innovation ‘New Space’ started by Space X,’ writes the startup.

Three layers will power this new economic zone. The first is creating an independent and decentralized maritime city adaptable to climate change, focusing on promoting daily mental and physical self-care and offering various programs. The second layer revolves around building an underwater data infrastructure to help develop the marine business model. Lastly, N-Ark wants to take advantage of the sea to create a new tourism industry that connects to space, using the ground as a launch and landing site for rocket transportation services.

Habitable Ring

a village-like city in japan  with three infrastructure zones 

Spanning 1.58 kilometers in diameter and approximately 4 kilometers in circumference, the floating ‘Dogen City’ could be described as a small village, accommodating about 10,000 residents and 30,000 daytime visitors and tourists. Together, the 40,000-sized population can benefit from different urban functions: Food production facilities, R&D Lab and Schools, Stockpile / Security Centers, Cemeteries & Prayers, offices, food/beverage and merchandise sales, hospitals, parks, stadiums, halls, mobile islands, telecommunication stations, and lastly, residential hotels.

Autonomous Floating Architecture

These programs are organized into three zones. The Habitable Ring provides a living infrastructure and public housing; shaped like a ship, it protects the inner bay from natural disasters like tsunamis. The Undersea Edge Data Center — cooled underwater — provides high value-added services such as urban management OS, healthcare data analysis, and drug discovery simulation while reducing energy consumption. And finally, The Autonomous Floating Architecture, as its name suggests, can move freely in the inner bay and allow for flexible reconfiguration of urban functions. With these three different zones, N-ARK hopes to create a self-sustaining maritime city based on a powerful data architecture. 

Undersea Edge Data Center

smart healthcare meets medical tourism 

Beyond those features, ‘Dogen City’ stands out for its dedicated focus on an innovative healthcare system, City OS Dogen, based on living area data. According to N-ARK, residents can receive daily telemedicine consultations and have their health status analyzed via devices and sensors, blood samples, and genome analysis for an accurate evaluation. The system also proposes advanced medical care, such as drug discovery simulations and remote robotic surgery, received through computational processing at the undersea edge data center. 

Complementing the more clinical layer of this healthcare system is a medical tourism program that educates the population on ‘medical foods and cuisine nurtured in maritime cities’. This program specifically combines foodstuffs produced by seawater agriculture and aquaculture complexes, cuisines, and seawater thermal springs.

realization of a disease-free society through telemedicine based on living area data

Beyond its advanced healthcare infrastructure, the floating city also offers an extensive natural disaster program whereby residents and visitors alike get to learn about evacuation site functions in the event of earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis. Finally, in line with the project’s commitment to social impact, ‘Dogen City’ will develop solutions for climate refugees as well as human resource development through advanced education.