Speculation

World Wide Web

Cyberspace

Tourism

Archaeology

The Internet

Computer science

Real estate

Business

Temporalities

Architecture

Frontier

Political science

Sociology

Finance

Urbanism

Dark tourism

History

Journal of Consumer Culture

As demand for e-commerce surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, investors began pouring billions into start-ups promising to accelerate digitization and automation in small-margin, winner-take-all sectors, such as retail, grocery, and dining. I examine two business models that feature prominently in this swell of financial optimism: dark stores and ghost kitchens. Both sacrifice consumer-facing real estate to create logistical spaces for online order fulfillment, and both are predicted to become permanent fixtures of the post-pandemic economic landscape. However, few have commented on the consequences of this future-in-the-making or who is likely to suffer them. The essay therefore anticipates how “going dark” may impact consumers, workers, and urban geographies. I argue that going dark represents a new threshold in the spatial materialities and financial imaginary of platform urbanism, what I call the logistical-urban frontier. I theorize how this frontier threatens historically disenfranchised urban communities, and I conclude the essay with a reflection on the conflicted temporalities of logistical speculation.

Platform urbanism in a pandemic: Dark stores, ghost kitchens, and the logistical-urban frontier