The outgrowth of the city had been underway for over seven decades. Throughout the years, the shoreline was progressively colonized with private high-rise constructions in units, pairs and compounds. Permeable only to their dwellers, these growths collaterally prevented all crossovers to and from the sea: while they were equipped with security and surveillance apparatuses to regulate access to their own premises, their chain-like alignment constituted an impermeable physical barrier that surrounded what came to be known as the inner-city. Visible only through certain corridors and gaps in the siege, the shoreline grew distant from the inner-city dwellers. Even the smell of the sea hardly crossed the siege, blown back to the horizon by a series of giant deodorizing mist fans. The sea and coast eventually became an abstract landform, a postcard, sometimes a photograph, but mostly a bedtime story, a nostalgic memory or a threatening myth. Having lost all sensation of it, by 2061 the inner-city dwellers forcibly relinquished all possibility of agency or claim over the sea.

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With their rear-windows overlooking the inner-city and their bay-windows reflecting the horizon, the surrounding high-rises were the catalysts of a shift in the orientation, center of gravity and magnetic field of the urban growth. This process was accelerated and accompanied by the irreversible decline of infrastructure and living conditions within the enclosure, decaying too rapidly for the rate at which maintenance was being administered. The inner-city no longer met the living standards of the newcomers. Having reached a deadlock in the process to densify and upkeep the inner-city, the shoreline became the prime location for further extension. 

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The pilot project, sector 13, having proved its success as a yacht club and waterfront development, the coast was cleared to proceed with similar extensions all around the belt.