A guest post from TSI co-founder Wayne Gramlich about his vision for the evolution of seastead communities:

My model for a seastead community is that it will grow and evolve along the same lines of Venice, Italy. Venice started off as 118 small shallow islands off the coast of Italy. In the beginning, passage between the islands was via small boats. Over time these islands became fully populated and interconnected via bridges. I expect a seastead community to follow a similar evolutionary path.

While it would be wonderful to have a fully interconnected seastead city at the outset, basic economics dictate that an initial seastead community will start off as a heterogeneous collection of individual seasteads. These seasteads will range from sailboats, old converted cargo ships, ocean going yachts, and purpose built seasteads. The purpose built seasteads will range from small to medium and eventually to quite large. The small seasteads will be short and squat and relatively low to the ocean surface. The more expensive and comfortable seasteads will extend upwards from the sea surface to reduce interaction with large waves. Eventually, large elevated surfaces along the lines of Mini-Float, Float, Inc., or VersaBuoy will become available. The larger structures will be either be bolted together or interconnected via bridges.