Nearly a Mile Long, Home to 80,000 — Welcome to the First Floating City

The idea sounds like a futuristic cruise ship pushed far beyond normal scale: a floating city almost a mile long, carrying tens of thousands of people, with schools, hospitals, parks, shops, entertainment venues, and homes instead of cabins.

The project is called Freedom Ship, a revived concept first associated with American engineer Norman Nixon in the 1990s. The latest plan presents it as a mobile city that would travel slowly around the world, but it remains a proposal rather than a completed vessel. Recent reports describe a target capacity of 80,000 people, including residents, crew, and visitors.