The Sunday Herald

Flotillas of floating homes, shops and offices are being proposed as 21st-century arks to ride out the floods global warming will bring. A Scottish creative designer and entrepreneur is developing plans for a series of aquatic villages along the Clyde. Drawing on designs pioneered in the Netherlands, Bill Borland's Creative Mode company has been talking to developers, planners and government agencies about an idea whose time he believes has come. "The statutory bodies talk of bringing life to the Clyde, but I want to put life on to the Clyde," he said. Properties built along the waterfront will be flooded more often and more seriously over the next 50 years due to rising sea levels and fiercer storms caused by climate change, he warned. Borland, 54, brought up in Paisley but based in Halifax, calls his scheme Aquartek. He has made specific proposals for floating communities at the Cuningar Loop of the Clyde at Dalmarnock in south Lanarkshire and at Braehead in Renfrewshire.