[Reading Response: Carl Abbott]

In Science fictions, cities are always migratory. In contrast to Le Corbusier’s proposals for building high rise buildings in fixed placed, migratory cities are movable and flexible, which means they do not have a fixed location. For example, in fiction Armada, cities are built on ships that are connected together and floating on the water. This scenery reminds me of the rising sea level nowadays due to global warming, which has threatened some low-level cities and small islands to vanish from the ground level. This is the issue that our many countries across the world have been working on, developed countries are more likely to build skyscrapers for significant purpose.

In some sense, higher level symbolises the higher class, while the one who lives on the ground are most likely to be grassroots. As said in the fiction, space at lower level are often used as transportation only, while most living space is on the top. Meanwhile, manual power is invaluable which lower class people work so hard to trade for food and fuels. I think in Carl’s perspective, a Cyber City also shows the worsening hierarchy system in society, where natural resources have been used up and the competition between population has become vicious and cruel, that is why the contrast in Cyber City is so dramatic.

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1 thought on “[Reading Response: Carl Abbott]

  1. Jen Lam says:

    Apart from issues of social stratification, what are other real-life issues that the migratory cities comment on? If cyber cities are meant to be unbuilt, what is the purpose of conjuring them?

    Reply

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