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Future World Vision Floating City Excites With Possibilities at ASCE 2019
Convention
Ben Walpole, Editor, ASCE News
What if? Why not?
Four short words; one entirely new mindset.
It’s the essence of ASCE’s Future World Vision project,
simultaneously open to and questioning of the civil engineering
possibilities that will shape the way infrastructure works and
society lives decades into the future.
“We’ve got to have more people thinking this way,” said Lenor
Bromberg, P.E., F.ASCE, deputy director of community
development for the City of Roswell, Georgia. “We’re civil
engineers, and we are creative people. We really need to use
the intelligence and the problem-solving skills we have to create
these solutions. It’s up to us to do it.”
Convention attendees had the chance to experience the
Future World Vision Floating City via virtual reality.
PHOTO: Jason Dixson Photography
Bromberg was one of hundreds of ASCE members who
experienced the Future World Vision Floating City, debuted this
week at the ASCE 2019 Convention in Miami.
The mix of virtual reality experience and interactive desktop interface gave users the chance to explore the future
infrastructure possibilities of a Floating City, an
immersive world constructed in a real-time 4D
computer simulation model.
“Honestly, I’m blown away. I thrive on this kind
of thing, because I love studying social and
environmental impacts,” said Garrett Wilhelm,
S.M.ASCE, a senior at the University of South
Florida.
“It really lends itself to asking yourself, ‘OK, what
kind of infrastructure will be needed by society?
And how is society affected by that
infrastructure?’ Really looking at it as a holistic
model.”
The Floating City debuted at the ASCE 2019 Convention in Miami.
It was fitting that the Floating City future world’s first
PHOTO: Jason Dixson Photography
showing was in Miami, a city that already faces
significant challenges to its status quo due to sea-level rise and flooding. James Murley, chief resilience officer for
Dade County in Florida, was impressed.
www.asce.org/ewri • EWRI Currents • Volume 21, Number 4 • Fall 2019
