Mobile Cities

Humanity has often preferred to move its communities, and in the future we might do that by moving our entire cities, by air, sea, or land.

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Credits:
Mobile Cities
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 403, July 13, 2023
Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur

Written by:
Briana Brownell
Isaac Arthur

Editors:
Briana Brownell
David McFarlane

Graphics by:
Fishy Tree
Jeremy Jozwik
Ken York (YD Visual)
Sergio Botero
Udo Schroeter

Music Courtesy of:
Markus Junnikkala, "Plotting a Course", "We Roam the Stars"
Stellardrone, "Red Giant", "Between the Rings"
Miguel Johsnon, "Far From Home", "So Many Stars"
Aerium, "Fifth Star of Aldebaran"

[isaacarthurSFIA]

Here's the link for the July 13 NSS Space Forum on Instabase I mentioned in the episode :) It is free, hope to see you there.

[UpliftedCapybara]

I always find it impressive how you’ve managed to come out with new videos for so long and still you have something new to cover. The amount of material on this channel already is incredible!

[bradlynch]

Just want to confirm this was not clickbait.

[brick]

Modern cruise ships aren't far off this, some even have permanent residents. If you've never seen one up close they are beyond gigantic. The Titanic looks like a dinghy next to a modern cruise ship. The currently under-construction Icon of the Seas is 1, 200ft long, weights over 250, 000 GT, and between passengers and crew can carry nearly 10, 000 people. The smallest state capital is Montpelier, Vermont, and has only about 7, 500 people.

[DavidPaulNewtonScott]

Mobile sea cities would be a good idea, one could simply move it to the optimum location for the time of year. This already happens to some extent in the sailing community.

[llanorick]

We had a town that was moved once, a little south of Lubbock Tx. The town was built about a mile east of the planned site. They put all the buildings on skids, and dragged the whole town to where it belonged. This is how Slide Tx got its name.

[failedleopard]

For those that go: "Wait, why is the Swedish town of Kiruna moving?"
It is due to the mining operations that have spread underneath the city, making the ground unstable. There have been instances of local earthquakes occurring due to the unstable ground. Their solution was to move the city because the mining operations are MASSIVELY profitable, and they keep finding new veins and materials, the last one was the beginning of 2023 where they found what is labelled "Europe's biggest rare earth minerals deposits". They have the funding to move the entire town of 22k people and their houses which is wack.

[--styx]

The thing I contemplate most about cities is what is their purpose, every city on earth at first had a purpose. Natural resources nearby, strategic locations for defense/offense and in that regard there are many reasons for a mobile city. It should be important to note though there's also reasons to have smaller mobile structures like Labs, refineries or factories.

Currently we have a rover on Mars doing tons of research. It's not too much of a stretch to have a rover lab filled with people there too. These could be rovers, subs, tanks or walkers easily depending on the environment as well. So if your sci fi needs a little extra cool one of those would be a neat thing to throw in without being too much of a stretch for your readers.

[Sadew_Sadew]

Some other examples are the "Ship Country" and the "Bothersome Country" from Kino's Journey, with Bothersome Country being a strangely close plot to Mortal Engines (I think the light novel story of it predates ME, even). What a shame what happened to the Mortal Engines movie though. Lots of other fun examples in games, like the Wandering Village, too. Thanks for covering this topic Isaac!

[gabrielwolffe]

I always liked the idea of walking buildings or cities using "strandbeest" legs to move around, particularly because they would be able to utilize fairly complicated motion without requiring a great deal of computational oversight, as a building walking around on something like spider legs might require. In theory they also wouldn't require a particularly complicated drive train for that motion, or could be driven by external forces like wind.

[ShibsKensei]

The anime Chrome Shelled Regios, is all about mobile cities called Regios, that travel around on a ruined Earth looking for resources, fighting giant mutated insects, and competing with other mobile cities for said resources.

[UrdnotChuckles]

The city of Terminator in Kim Stanley Robinson's various books was always a neat mobile city. Always rolling around the horizon line of Mercury, keeping out of direct sunlight.

[Voidseer]

I liked this one and I feel compelled to add a notable example of The the moving cities of Arknights. Where they need to move so as to avoid calamities which in setting very from devastating blizzards to explosive fireballs raining from the sky. They have gained the ability to forecast these calamities like the weather and move the cities out of the way in a few hours time. I felt that this would have been a nice addition to your video, but even then great video as usual.

//Edit:And now I realize it was already mentioned.

[rubinelli]

One really cool concept is the tame megafauna that drags the city or even carries it on its back. One of the factions in Warhammer is composed of nomads that set their tents on giant beetles. (I mistook them for another nomadic faction in Endless Legend who uses more conventional beasts of burden.)

[lonjohnson]

The first rule of warfare: If your city is about to be attacked, get out of the way.

[rastan]

The first mobile city I always think of is Terminator on Mercury in the novel 2312. On rails going around the planet, such a cool idea.

[adak]

My favorites are great big spinning toroids, mile wide 10 miles in diameter I saw early renderings done in the 70's and I was like wow, this is how you build a city! Central waterway through the middle, with terraced homes, buildings, gardens, forests, built up embankments on both sides. It would be so unbelievably huge, you wouldn't even feel like you were in space, just in a normal city. If you could stick a fusion drive on them, do 1/2 speed of light, make into a generational ship to populate exoplanets within a couple hundred light years.

[minhmeo]

Me: *click on the vid to see if it have any clickbait

Issac: “There are no clickbait titles on this show.”

Me: *Understood, have a nice day 😎

[Sol-Invictus]

I always imagined massive pyramid colonies that just land and start doing what's necessary. Massive green houses as the outer layer if you're near star (mostly looked cool in my head as a kid)

[MrFirsito]

oh yes Mortal Engines, the book ... i remember the first time reading it, that awe feeling, amazing concepts