Pandemic empties historic centers, suburbs revolt

In a post-pandemic future, historic city centers risk becoming dead museum-cities without tourism, while suburbs reclaim social life. The essay by Marcello Faletra on Artribune compares the pandemic void to Eugène Atget's early 20th-century photographs of empty Paris, which Walter Benjamin called an 'optical unconscious.' Unlike Atget's archaeological emptiness, the pandemic void is spectral, as seen in Las Vegas's deserted casinos. In cities like Florence, museification has erased relational heritage, replaced by history consumption. In Naples, Istanbul, and Rio de Janeiro, suburbs act as disorder propellers, besieging old centers with social upheaval. Gentrification and brand religion provoke a violent response from peripheral populations dispossessed of their origins. The city as a consumerist daydream must choose between fetishistic postcard seduction and Baudelaire's flâneur, who wanders aimlessly in radical uselessness.