In Abbott’s article, migratory cities in science fiction are able to ‘fly, walk, crawl, roll, creep and float’ under future advanced technologies. These cities have the ability to break down geographical boundaries and maintain high mobility, and a concept of urban dystopia inside these cities often exists. Fictional examples include the eternally-moving train in Snowpiercer to face the man-made ice age, self-sustained movable robots depicted in Walking City,high-tech ships shown in Battlestar Galactica etc. In my opinion, these migratory cities stimulate the imagination about what our future looks like by providing a visualization of a fictional world. We can imagine the appearance of the neighbourhood and human activities in the future and we can’t deny the possibility of the actual future world becoming exactly the same as shown in the films and books.
3035796139- Chan Tsz Fung, Louis
You summarised some of Abbott’s key ideas and examples well. Your point about the importance of visualising these migratory cities in helping us imagine our future is interesting and can be explored further.