Since the Star Wars trilogy had become a global sensation, our aesthetic appeal had been highly influenced by futuristic movie scenes and sci-fi culture. Perhaps, one would aspire their city to become something not only fascinating and mind-blowing but also well-organized and parametric. Albeit the practical difficulties, urban planners and governors tend to make the city more defined, by reconstructing and replanning all components within the city.
It is without a doubt that with adequate urban planning, residential, recreational, commercial, and industrial areas can be evenly dispersed within the metropolis, ultimately providing daily convenience to local citizens. Many have longed for the formation of the ‘ultimate city’, where daily events are happening without conflicting with each other, and every single dweller in the city is harmoniously living under rule and order. However, we must consider the fact that in order to allow this to happen, we must sacrifice the underused elements within the metropolis. Urban planners and governors tend to undergo gentrification or even obliterate previously built environments in order to achieve the so-called necessary ‘disappearance’ of the city. Eventually and inevitably, the touch of human sense and past city cultures imprinted on local built environments may slowly fade away.
Should architects and urban planners demolish the past in order to create a better future? Personally, I believe that there should be a striking balance between creating an aesthetic metropolis and defending indigenous cultures and humanities.
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You made a good point on what it means for the cities to be specialised by tapping into the gentrification issue. I would say what Abbot was trying to provoke for the “what-if scenarios” through his article. What if the cities are moving? How would they move and organise themselves? Maybe, what he was trying to do is providing a platform for planners and theorists to rethink the cities (as he mentioned in the last sentences of his article). That way, he was taking the imaginative writing to spatial discourse. Would be interesting to take a closer look at what would gentrification looked like in a migratory city.