Occupied, Again: The Politics of Erasure and the Acts of Return

Jacob Merder

Thesis Essay

Prof. Elæ Moss Benedetto

December 2025

Vacancy is often treated as a neutral or inevitable outcome of urban transformation, yet the places we inhabit are never a static collection of buildings and streets. They are living archives of the social, political, and economic forces that shape them, and within these archives, absence speaks just as loudly as presence. The empty storefront, the stalled development, and the neglected housing block waiting for investment each appear incidental, yet vacancy is rarely passive. It is a strategically produced condition, sustained through economic, political, and spatial mechanisms that privilege certain populations while displacing others. What disappears from the city, and who is displaced in the process, are not accidents of time, but deliberate products of policy, profit, and design. In this way, vacancy becomes an active urban force rather than a passive void, shaping how our cities evolve and who they are built for. It is not a symptom of decline, but a deliberate instrument of power, one that both reflects and reinforces existing systems of inequity. In contemporary cities such as New York, vacancy is often framed as evidence of progress or renewal. Developers describe it as a “great opportunity,” politicians as “beneficial revitalization,” and designers as a “blank slate.” Yet beneath these narratives lies a quieter violence: the calculated removal of certain populations and the silencing of the cultural life they share. The production of vacancy is, therefore, not only an economic process but a social and moral one, marking where the city has decided to forget.