Abbott introduced several films that depicted the future of cities being desperate and grim. It is interesting to discover the underlying metaphor.
Many fictions portrayed the future human society to be brutal. Abbott illustrated the Darwinism city in Mortal Engines, where social stratification is intensified to extreme: elite have privilege to open air while lower factories are struck in filth. This reminds me of 1984 which depicts how despotism eradicates people’s free will and creates an orderly utopia in disguise. Although whether these pessimistic predictions exaggerate the dark side of society remains questionable, they warn us against an evil entropy of humanity and humanism.
More interesting is the architecture depicted in these movies: future city is a hodgepodge in migratory massive tracks, spaceships and trains. We can see along with rapid technological development, there is growing fear of machines overborne humanity, and worries that humanism loss their stationary hometown, wandering towards nomad land.
Sze Lui
3035799337
I think you made a good point about how these fictions depict general humanity’s anxiety toward the machines. But maybe, what Abbot 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, as Boyer did with her cyber-cities in the 1990s. What if we are living in a moving city? How would you think the city move, toward which direction, and how the city is organising itself? When cities are specialised in their function, how would you think they affect society? Would it narrow or broaden the existing social (class) distance? By following these questions, you could open more possibilities to critically delve into more pressing issues in society.