The ecology of “as if”. Ruins, rubble, and the art of reversal in a post-industrial city

In recent decades, Sesto San Giovanni – the former “Factory City” on the outskirts of Milan, Italy – has undergone profound and complex process of deindustrialisation, reshaping the urban landscape. This article explores this transformation through the concept of the ecology of “as if”. It aims to show how certain objects or elements of the urban landscape are treated “as if” they were something other than what they are. It considers the transformation of the remains of the factories in terms of fictions that, by reversing reality, prove useful in telling new stories about the urban landscape. Thus, the machinery from abandoned factories is exhibited in the city’s streets, “as if” it were surrealist art or an artefact from a museum. The remains of workers’ production spaces are reinvented as leisure spaces for the middle classes. The old factories’ waste products are redesigned and experienced as if they were “pristine nature”. Through autobiographical reflection and ethnographic insights, the article argues that this “as if” logic aestheticises the industrial past, potentially masking structural inequalities and undermining critical engagement with the ecological and social consequences of deindustrialisation. The result is an urban landscape characterised by contradictions and ambivalences between memory and oblivion, authenticity and simulation, and preservation and commodification.