The cheapest place in international waters.

Why do you want to build your own island? Are you Karl Stromberg?

Let me google Karl Stromberg and get back to you.

Yes, I'm Karl Stromberg.

And here we witness the thread in which steephie jumps the shark.

How much space do a million people need? Will the island be free floating or anchored to the ground? Can't we 'just' push the sea back like they do in Holland?

So an island is one thing, but i kinda assume you actually want a city. Like skyscrapers and living space. As opposed to a rural island (there are lots of those, inhabitated and uninhabited...) there is also a guy who has built his own island (floating on wood, supported by recycled bottles, tied together by the roots of trees - which thrive in salt water, can't remember the name if those trees - but i'm not sure how many people could live on his island...)

So the question can be reduced to how much does a skyscraper cost, plus hiw many people can live there, plus how much does it take to get it to float... (And multiply up based on target number of a million)

So lets me do some basic research in the average skyscraper...

Lets take the Russia Tower as an example, 350,000 m^2 and a price tag of $3 billion.

And average house in the UK is about 76m^2, lets say 75, and houses 4 people. So lets say 20m^2 per person (and assuming living and working space together, and ignoring extra things like space inbetween living spaces)

That Russia tower could comfortably house 17,500 people. So we'll need about 57 of them to fit 1 million.

Next i'll need to aproximate. Double the price to build on the sea. So i get a total of $342 Billion (57 * 3b * 2)

Now reality check; that seems reasonable at only $342 thousand dollars per person. So i'm going to assume this estimate is actually very low given that no-one is actually building on the sea; if the price ended up being reasonable then people would probably have tried it...

Also everything costs more when you are doing it for the first time. So you can add on at least another $300 Billion in research and development, extra building costs, etc.

@abge: Don't worry, you only get to see the worst side of me here ;-)
PM me for the better parts of me but I'm sure you're being funny.

"How much space do a million people need?"
No clue. You tell me.

"Will the island be free floating or anchored to the ground?"
Whatever is cheapest and guarantees that it remains in international waters.

"Can't we 'just' push the sea back like they do in Holland?"
Not if it's claimed territory. I guess you could start with a small island and make that bigger the Dutch way..
I wonder how long it would take if you 'let nature take its course' partially, using cohesion of sand in certain plants for instance.

I suppose the point is creating dry land, so if you can keep the ocean outside while the island remains below sea level, that's fine too.

For one million people this almost definitely won't be useful, but maybe you could look into Chinese dredging in the South China Sea?

@ora: Interesting estimate. So for the first time building it, you're already at $642 thousand per person. That means that if someone did this for profit, he or she probably needs to ask well over a million for one person for a moderate profit, because of the financing costs (even Bill Gates would have to take a huge loan and either paying interest over loans or spending the funds to get the investors will be very expensive, unless we assume it's a government project which somehow sounds even more unrealistic than a private initiative to me), the fact that selling them all would be a pain too etc.

As for why it's not done yet, finding a million people willing to spend a million dollars to literally live in the middle of nowhere is hard enough, but you're also in international waters. We're completely ignoring life supplies, the fact that you need military protection because no country needs to protect you, transferring, somehow establishing some sort of government or something..
There's a ridiculous amount of extra costs, risks and complications. So I think it can be a realistic estimate and still not happening yet. I don't really know whether it's indeed a realisitc estimate.

@DeathLlama8: I'm Dutch and the Dutch are the worldwide experts in claiming land from the sea, so I don't need to look as far as China I think :-)
Unless there's something in particular I should know?

So you can start small, build one of my recommended 57, and see how it goes.

Probably wouldn't look like a skyscraper, as building up only makes sense when the land area is a limiting factor. But in international waters you can spread out as much as you want.

Reasons why this isn't happening may include - it is a risk to go into internaional waters and investors would rather avoid risk.

Places this is happening - look at the wealthiest parts of the middle east. Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, places where they build islands or peninsulas and put up skyscrapers and cities... I don't have costs, also money becomes a very different thing when you're rolling in oil wealth...

They still do that within their borders though, don't they?

They are, still might be a good example.

I think it will cost roughly one million dollars,

If you have access to the right kind of equipment (nuclear weapons?), you could pierce the sea floor where the water is shallow, the oceanic crust is thin, and the mantle is hot. The resulting volcanic island could then be covered with sand and soil.

If this approach proved viable but slow, you could create a ring of islands and dredge sand to fill all or part of a central lagoon. Irregular shapes would be more appealing in terms of living conditions (everybody could have waterfront property) but less so in terms of architecture.

Of course, blowing up nuclear weapons drilled deep into the earth's core would probably kill millions of people, not to mention all the whales.

i believe that could qualify as a violation of various test ban treaties... which you may not have signed, but those that have don't really want you doing it either.

You've seen those episodes of Grand Designs where the "builders" describe their dream home, then give their budget and completion date & Kevin has his " never going to happen on that budget in that timeframe " look....

ASk Google they are building one already ?? No need for army protection when you have the worlds info by the balls..

In international waters, we can consider island cost is not far from cruise ships. Roughly cruise ships cost 200,000,000 us$ for 4000 passagers and crue members. For 1,000,000 people should be some optimisation. But the island is also expected to be more autonomous. Let's say it compensates. Global cost should be around 50 billions us$.

I think it would cost at least 1 million dollars.

I can build this for you for $10.

$15 for island chain.

Since the request is nothing more than island and there is no other requisites, the islands will be located in my bathroom build by a handful of sands collected from the local beach.

The costs associated is only for my profit.

I spent two months living on a sandbar years back. It was public property but nobody ever came out there.

http://www.wikihow.com/Buy-a-Private-Island

I think the more interesting question is....HOW are you going to build an island that can keep the weight of a million people and their required infrastructure afloat...in the middle of the oceans (where shallow water pretty much does not happen.How do you stop it from being carried away, or smashed to bits by storms/tsunami's/pirates/angry Koreans/extra sized alien goldfish etc etc.

Also does the island need to be self sufficient, or do you bring in resources from the mainland on a very regular basis? Both will be off the charts expensive for a million people if its an island very far away from everything. Just creating drinking water for that many people will require some pretty clever solutions, or a gigantic investment. For transportation on the island we clearly have to go with jetpacks, so theres that fuel requirement for those....

Realizing this idea is almost as hard as starting a moon colony

Btw steephie, why dont we ever see you at dutch F2F games?

"Btw steephie, why dont we ever see you at dutch F2F games?"

Hmm...
One reason is I'm busy but that's kind of cheap. The other might be that I don't want to explain to people that I'm traveling an hour or more to play a board game with strangers.

Third and definitely least, I'm not sure if I feel like it..

Sorry, I have no non-cheap answers for you.

To be fair to myself, I *have* been very busy and now I'm free so if one happened soon I would definitely consider :-)

"I don't want to explain to people that I'm traveling an hour or more to play a board game with strangers."

I tell people it's the board game of the Alpha Nerds. They see me rollin', they hatin'.

Oh I couldn't care less about what other people think about it, but why is a tricky question for me. Sure, to have fun, but if I travel somewhere to do something for one or two days, I feel like there are better options too. Hardly a good argument by itself, but if you consider that I don't know for sure that I'll enjoy that (although it seems likely :P) and that I was very busy was enough reason to not do it before.

Like I said, if one happens this holiday, I'll definitely consider. After that I'm starting at university and I'm sorry but I'll probably enjoy a day there more than a day playing Diplomacy, so then I might not consider so much :-)

Messed up my grammar there, but should be clear.. sort of.

Why would someone want to own a private island?

Well simply not to deal with all those other poor peasants in the world... :P

http://www.privateislandsonline.com/