Sim Eternal City is the long-term future city project of city storyteller Paul J. J. Kang. It imagines how the cities we live in can survive rising seas, longer lives, and rapid technological change without losing their humanity.

By humanity, we mean memory, care, and community. And beyond that, we mean redesigning our economic and social communities by reinventing the way individuals and communities work and create value together.

Our cities are facing two shifts at once. The climate crisis is shrinking the space we can live on, as floods, rising sea levels, and sinking coastlines reshape urban life. At the same time, longer lifespans and super-aged societies are stretching the time we live in those cities. And AI and robotics are changing how we work, move, and care for one another.

Sim Eternal City begins exactly where these pressures meet, and it asks one question:

Because no one imagines this future on their own.

If we wait to see it with our own eyes before we imagine it, it is already too late. When the land beneath our cities physically disappears, so do the lives, memories, and very existence we have built upon it.

That is why this project invites people to think, make, and imagine in concrete detail, before it happens. So that we can prepare in advance, and look beyond what comes next.

At its heart is a bold yet tangible idea: an 18-Minute City built by upcycling four decommissioned cruise ships. It is a new kind of city model, imagined while looking out over the waters of Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York.

This is not an ark for survival. It is a blueprint for hope.

Yet this model is not the answer. It is the first prototype. The more we refine our framework and study cities around the world, the clearer one truth becomes: every city has its own land and sea, its own climate and history, and its own way of life. So its future, and its story, must be different too.

The four-ship model will serve as the core archetype for designing real cities in the future, but it will be reimagined for each place. New York's answer will differ from Tokyo's, and Seoul's will be different again. In Future of Our Cities, we will tell those stories, one city at a time.

We take ideas that do not yet exist in the world and turn them into something that must exist, in three steps.

Every step is shared openly through writing, visuals, video, and interactive media. That is why we are looking for partners from many different fields to join us on this journey.

Paul Joseph J. Kang
City Storyteller · Founder, IWBFD Studios

For more than a decade, Paul has been imagining and writing the future of the cities we live in.

Read his essays and letters in The Creator.

We are looking for dreamers, builders, artists, caregivers, technologists, urbanists, and cities ready to imagine their future with us.

If you believe in cities that heal, educate, and remember, you are already one of our citizens.