Proposal for a nomadic city infrastructure in which urban utilities would not be tied to a specific location. Originally called Cities: Moving.

Walking City imagines a future in which borders and boundaries are abandoned in favour of a nomadic lifestyle among groups of people worldwide. Inspired by NASA's towering, mobile launch pads, hovercraft, and science fiction comics, Archigram envisioned parties of itinerant buildings that travel on land and sea. Like so many of Archigram's projects, Walking City anticipated the fast-paced urban lifestyle of a technologically advanced society in which one need not be tied down to a permanent location. The structures are conceived to plug into utilities and information networks at different locations to support the needs and desires of people who work and play, travel and stay put, simultaneously. By means of this nomadic existence, different cultures and information is shared, creating a global information market that anticipates later Archigram projects, such as Instant City and Ideas Circus.

Archigram

It is unlikely that the engineers who designed the various movable structures at Cape Kennedy ever heard of the Archigram Group. Indeed, the idea of a walking city would probably horrify them. Yet these engineers have designed and constructed a couple of dozen structures, some the height of 40 storey office buildings, that move serenely across the flat landscape. Yet in visionary architecture such concepts as prefabbed apartments hoisted into position on a skeletal frame, to be plugged into prepared utilities, are still considered impractical by most designers and builders.



Yet there are important urban problems - like intra and interurban transportation, for example - which could be attacked immediately, effectively, and speedily if there were a similar degree of courage and commitment - especially financial. The proud achievements of Cape Kennedy are proof of our ability to tackle the most staggering problems; and, by implication, they are an indictment of those who would not expend the same kind of effort on our urban ills.

Peter Blake

Architectural Forum, 1968