The empty city: COVID-19 and the apocalyptic imagination

The year 2020 was accompanied by a new apocalyptic zeitgeist. After the COVID-19 pandemic shattered lifeworlds in many societies around the world, it seemed easy to imagine it to be the end of the world. No image was more evocative of this moment than that of the empty city. Due to the various lockdowns implemented in numerous countries, images of empty cities spread across the media. This paper investigates this image by emphasising the political implications of the apocalyptic imagination. By focusing on those who remain in the public space after the city was emptied, this paper questions whether the image of the empty city simply fuels the fantasies of ‘urban exploration’, as critiques have stated, or if it, rather, paves the way for an open view of the inequalities produced by urban societies today. Therefore, the paper stresses that the remaining people we see in the images of emptied public spaces are mainly those who either have no home to stay inside or work for those who stay inside. Subsequently, it investigates the particular qualities of public spaces pictured during the lockdowns. Imagining cities as empty has been vehemently criticised through the notion of ‘ruin porn’. In contrast to this critique, the paper emphasises that the image of the empty city allows us to see the city with ‘inhuman’ eyes, which leads to a shift in perspective through recognising how little public space is still available when it no longer functions under the imperative of the pre-pandemic status quo. In concluding, the paper reflects on the subversive, or ‘emancipatory’, potential of witnessing the urban void opened up by the pandemic.