Build Cities Like Cruise Ships (Again)
I am not a big fan of cruise ship travel per se — heavy crude oil, high emissions and their overall footprint. I sometimes call them “the coffins of the sea” due to their shape and demographics attracted to this way of off-the-shelf tourism — but also because they embody a highly convenient form of travel in a late-stage decadence of society where resources seem abundant, prices are low and boarding is just a press of a button away — it is a zero effort form of travel that comes at low immediate cost and high external, long-term cost.
Why People Crave Cruise Ship Travel
But why do people crave cruise ship travel? Is it lack in sense of community, isolation and sprawl of where people live?
As a designer I am also not a fan of stigmatizing people though — but instead I am asking WHY people might be craving this form of travel as means to escape from everyday life. Today I found an answer watching Simon Wilson’s “I tried a 1-Star-Cruise” video. I honestly expected a Temu-grade equivalent of peak consumerism on the sea - but it certainly had all the ingredients for a good time: Accessibility, Affordability — and Community.
“We have a spa, a restaurant, pizzeria, casino, disco, arcade, an outdoor jogging track, a theatre, a chapel, a disco, another theatre — a lot to do”
The Power of Tiny Spaces
In my article on The Power of Tiny I explored how smaller things can simplify your life. Certainly cruise ships are not tiny compared to their smaller ships and boats (personally I love kayaks and sail boats) — but here is the point: Compared to a city, cruise ships are tiny yet fulfil all the requirements of a city — in a zipped format. Sure, they are not circular (yet), there is no biodiversity, no green energy grid, they depend on supply from the mainland — but the same issue exists in cities and is not the point here.
15 Minute Cities vs. Urban Sprawl
There is this idea of 15 minute cities that have all the amenities in walkable distance, often seen as a conspiracy theory agenda thing by people who are afraid of any change.
What if we had the chance to live permanently in such an environment? A giant lobby to work, eat and socialise, sundeck and 2 minutes to bed. Imaging urban sprawl was applied to the cruise ships.
Technically you could even see hallways as highways and cabins as single family houses — But at least they are not single family homes divided by large properties, lawns, driveways and stroads.
The distances are low because people decided to share amenities and take only a limited amount of stuff . Building a suburb on a cruise ship would not be financially viable for any cruiseship operator — nor it is on land.
I think sometimes humans are like cats after all, preferring to sit in a box. Similarly, cruise ship travelers spend their best days of the year in a small (yet then also large, high density socialising space).
A recent article George Saines on whether population density is the reason why Americans can’t discuss politics connects to this idea: Of course you need places of retreat — but primarily the idea should be to have high density so people get the chance to talk to each other
To all designers, urban planners, politicians: If you truly want to run successful countries — follow the small success cases like The Netherlands, Singapore, Estonia, Switzerland: Prevent urban sprawl, plan and utilize your space more intentional — with ameneties for recreation and connection.