Exploring the social and spatial aspects of floating urban developments: a typology of floating communities

Floating urban developments may offer a solution to secure living space while simultaneously adapting to climate risks. As such developments are mainly smaller in scale, upscaling may contribute to broader urban climate resilience. Although social acceptance and inclusiveness of large-scale floating developments – moving beyond creating space for the ‘happy few’ – can be considered key for upscaling, research so far has neglected social aspects. Therefore, this paper explores existing floating communities and their underlying place features and community values and develops a typology of floating communities to increase our understanding of people's motives and reasons for living on water. By combining desk research with case study analysis, storytelling, and expert interviews, we identified six types of existing floating communities worldwide which vary in terms of place and lifestyle: (1) Urban living, (2) Luxurious living, (3) Sustainable living, (4) Resource-based living, (5) Informal living, and (6) Alternative communal living. In the Global North, floating communities are mostly planned as an adaptive housing solution, while in the Global South, they have emerged out of necessity, often following exclusion from mainland society. The paper concludes with key lessons for developing floating communities, serving as a starting point for future research and upscaling.