One of the biggest growth opportunity this century will be terraforming lands that we once believed was inhabitable. These will be extreme environments such as deserts, mountains, and will create new spaces and new communities for the future. This is the prelude to space travel and interplanetary habitation that will be likely next century.

It will not be climate activists who will make the positive change to our planet; it will be the terraform engineers and scientists who will change the world as we know it. In this article, we are going to talk about how desert terraforming is reshaping the future of Africa, China, and the Middle East.

However, we believe Africa will be the biggest beneficiary of terraforming their deserts back into lush greenery and noticed what I said. I said turning the deserts back into green space because we are realizing deserts are not a “permanent landscape” and can be reversed back into green space it once was.

Be mindful that Las Vegas was created out of a desert as well as Dubai.

Desert Terraforming Examples

In Africa, desert terraforming started with creating micro-ponds that can support plants and biodiversity. One thing you will learn from this video is the land was not really desert and had good soil that needed to be revitalized.

Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman are also working on projects that turn their desert areas into greenspace and create an agricultural landscape.

In China, considered the pioneers of terraforming deserts, they have turned a lot of land back to green spaces.

You should see a pattern of awesomeness of the ability to create new livable spaces out of these areas that have become deserts. What we should know now is that deserts can be converted back into green spaces and we can build communities as a result.

Once Greenspace is Established, Urbanization

The picture above is important – once we establish greenspace from the desert, we build an urban community and we plan for the area to be big enough to be a mid-size city.

Urbanization requires the following elements:

Streets and Sanitation. Establish a layout for transportation from cars, bikes & scooters, sidewalks, trams. This is critical to design street and pathways for growth and scale out at the beginning to support large buildings and possible heavy traffic as well as green space.

Structure and Zoning. These are designated areas designed for commercial, residential, industrial, aerospace. If this sounds familiar, you been playing SimCity on the computer which does have an accurate city building concept, the old isometric version from 2000.  

Water and Sewer.  This is critical to pull in water and handle waste water. In the US, the Army Corps of Engineers created artificial lakes and dams to support large cities. With deserts, Saudi Arabia Neom project is using a new concept of a solar ball that is filled with saltwater and solar grids heat the water to distributed fresh water made from steam. In the desert, there are two sources of fresh water, monsoon season and underwater oasis.  The Sahara Desert has the biggest underground freshwater reservoir in the world and is untapped.

Energy Grids. In the desert, renewable energy such as wind and solar can be implemented but one of the challenges is deciding to create a central energy grid or establish micro-grids where each house or building have their own energy source. Swappable battery and smaller generators to power buildings may be the future of powering these types of cities in the future and likely a more resilient solution to managing energy.

Parks and Recreation. Think of places like Lake Mead or Lake Lanier, an artificial lake created by the Army Corps of Engineers or a garden area as well as parks and walking paths. Cooling areas and underground structures that are cooler to walk through are also possible in these new areas to build and create a quality of life for people and families to enjoy third spaces.

Establish Economic Zones

One thing that we know the WEF is dreaming about and we want you to take the initiative is establish economic zones for future tech factories in this new city. This will be your best bet to create an quick economic engine to produce revenue to support the city and keep it thriving.

Your ideal new desert city will have only high-value, residents who are building high-tech businesses, high-tech industries, and financial services. You are going to soon learn that UAE and Abu Dhabi and Dubai created the standard, but Africa is ripe to reproduce that model throughout the continent as well.

The best approach is to create a system where you hand out visas to wealthy people to establish residency and their business in your new city. The wealthy people in turn hire workers from around the world or build robots and invest in infrastructure to support their business.

It is important you do one thing in your strategy – be tax-free. Make tax-free an incentive and in some countries, look at becoming an economic free zone where businesses can setup in a tax-free region and create economic activity for the rest of the country.

Africa is Expected to Win Big in the 21st Century.

One thing I like about the video above is they give the Incans their props because they invented the first true terraforming of mountains like Macchu Picchu into farming spaces and retaining and recycling water at the same time – one of the biggest engineering wonders of the world, not Pyramids that did nothing but hold mummies.

One of the biggest places in the world that will benefit of reclaiming new land is Africa. The countries can terraform areas that have been become deserts back into green spaces and create new future economic regions.

Think about the technology to support these new regions – robotic factories, drones and airships, renewable energy, water and waste recycling and processing – all of these are billion-dollar industries.

African nations can start at the 21st century and go all in on the future. We believe if Africa take advantage of terraforming and claiming new land and build it on futurism, they will also be leaders in taking it to the next level, space habitation.