Quarantinology

What will cities look like in the aftermath of Covid-19? What does the stress test of mass quarantine reveal about emerging dynamics in contemporary urbanism, from the platformization of public space to the new communalism of the precariat? Quarantinology is one attempt to answer this question: a catalog of hyperfunctional logics that builds upon the history of the quarantined city and speculates about its future. It asks how dual use and mixed typologies – from disaster urbanism in Japan to Berlin’s Tempelhof Airfield (at once an airport and a park and a refugee shelter) – could produce a future in which we do not need to place homeless people in empty parking spaces overnight. It asks which aspects of social life can be enhanced within the metaverse – from love and sex to music festivals and workspaces – intensifying the results to see how weird things could get. It addresses central concerns about surveillance, real estate, industrial design, and the city-as-a-service, accepting contradiction and eccentricity as a condition of its method.