History Main / MobileCity

* ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'': Mobile cities, while not extremely common, exist on multiple worlds. Some are simply elaborate art projects or lifestyle whims by the setting's hypertech civilizations, while others exist as responses to specific needs.

For less extreme cousins of this trope, see BaseOnWheels and MovingBuildings. Supertrope to MercurialBase. Compare TurtleIsland and CityOnTheWater. See also PlanetSpaceship. Often a variant of a WanderingCulture.

* ''Webcomic/CirqueRoyale'': The entire kingdom of Clowny Island is mobile; the houses are individually wheeled. This allows the kingdom and the circus it's based on to pack up and move from kingdom to kingdom to perform easily.

* ''LightNovel/ChromeShelledRegios'': Humanity lives on mobile cities called "Regios" after an apocalyptic event wrecks the world. They serve as protection against the polluted atmosphere and the giant man-eating Filth Monsters that roam the planet, and the cities frequently engage in competitions against each other for resources.

* ''VideoGame/{{Flotsam}}'': The player starts out with a single boat, but over the course of the game adds platforms and structures to it to transform it into a full, floating settlement that roams around the oceans of the world.

* ''''VideoGame/AgeOfMythology'''': Atlantean buildings blessed by Kronos can teleport to another location within the player's line-of-sight at a cost of five wood, while his towers teleport at a cost of the resources required to build one.

* ''Anime/SoulEater'': In the anime, [[spoiler: Death City]] is revealed to have legs and to be able to get up and walk around. This is set up early, with Dr Stein pointing out that the only way for Death to chase the BigBad would be if [[spoiler: Death City grew legs and started walking]], lampshading the ludicrousness of such a thought and making it so that no-one would assume that it could, in fact, happen.

For less extreme cousins of this trope, see BaseOnWheels and MovingBuildings. Supertrope to MercurialBase. Compare TurtleIsland. See also PlanetSpaceship. Often a variant of a WanderingCulture.

* In ''Literature/TheInvertedWorld'', the City is laboriously dragged forward on rails through the distorted landscape outside to keep up with the translat optimum. People's ages are even measured in miles...

* ''VideoGame/{{Crossout}}'': While players only get to see scattered wrecks of them, the Nomad faction is stated to be living in these, made from the remains of pre-collapse aircraft.

* ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey Nexus'' is set aboard Maginia, a flying city that serves as the base of operations for adventurers exploring the island of Lemuria on the surface.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': The roleplaying games include two examples:
** Ambulon, the wandering city, is built on the back of a titanic legged machine that walks across the unstable rocky centre of Scintilla's main continent. The machine itself predates the Imperium's arrival to Scintilla -- Ambulon was built on it secondarily. The city itself is a mobile settlement, making endless tours of the planet's oil, gas and gemstone deposits to harvest resources to send to its other, static cities. As with all other complex technology in the setting, Ambulon's mobility is poorly understood and kept going mostly by ritual -- no one knows exactly what would happen should it stop, and nobody wants to. As a result of these factors, the engineer guild that operates its engines and navigation wields immense political power. The city itself also experiences considerable UrbanSegregation, driven by a need for stable housing against the sway of the city's movements -- the powerful live in its center, the poor and the workers in more precarious spots along its edges, and the most disenfranchised and outcast have to cling to its underbelly and risk being scraped off when the city passes over a hill or ridge.
** The planet Zayth has been left scarred, barren and borderline unlivable by millennia of warfare, strip-mining to feed the wars, and the ceaseless movements of the cities themselves. Its people are now reduced to living in hive-ships, tracked megalopoli carrying ridiculous amounts of (occasionally starship-scaled) weaponry, used to battle other hive-ships for Zayh's dwindling resources.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

Most examples of this take place on land, but moving cities can inhabit other environments as well. Some exist on the sea, ranging from nomadic fleets to masses of ships lashed to each other to solitary vessels the size of cities to giant floating platforms with cities on them. Aerial examples also exist, held up by giant rotors, balloons or good old-fashioned magic or {{Technobabble}} and roaming the skies of their worlds; these often overlap with FloatingContinent. Mobile cities may occasionally have [[GeniusLoci minds/AI of their own too]]. City-sized spacecraft or space stations, while they technically fall under the definition of this trope, don't usually qualify since, unlike other examples, they are not confined to the surface of a planet.

Most examples of this take place on land, but moving cities can inhabit other environments as well. Some exist on the sea, ranging from nomadic fleets to masses of ships lashed to each other to solitary vessels the size of cities to giant floating platforms with cities on them. Aerial examples also exist, held up by giant rotors, balloons or good old-fashioned magic or {{Technobabble}} and roaming the skies of their worlds; see also FloatingContinent. Mobile cities may occasionally have [[GeniusLoci minds/AI of their own too]]. City-sized spacecraft or space stations, while they technically fall under the definition of this trope, don't usually qualify since, unlike other examples, they are not confined to the surface of a planet.

For less extreme cousins of this trope, see BaseOnWheels and MovingBuildings. Supertrope to MercurialBase. Compare TurtleIsland. And for this trope taken UpToEleven, check out PlanetSpaceship. Often a variant of a WanderingCulture.

For less extreme cousins of this trope, see BaseOnWheels and MovingBuildings. Supertrope to MercurialBase. Compare TurtleIsland. And for this trope taken UpToEleven, check out PlanetSpaceship. Compare Often a variant of a WanderingCulture.

For less extreme cousins of this trope, see BaseOnWheels and MovingBuildings. Supertrope to MercurialBase. Compare TurtleIsland. And for this trope taken UpToEleven, check out PlanetSpaceship.

* ''Anime/CastleInTheSky'': Laputa is a fortified town able to fly in the sky, but which has been abandoned by its former inhabitants.

** The "eternal train" Oseram consists of several building-sized carriages. It runs through Eurasia in order to power the filters that protects its population from the Punishing virus and uses its mobility to position itself as a MerchantCity that can buy and sell anything from anyone.