![]() ![]() In this way, Benjamin contributed to the intellectual movement focused on stripping away the excess of revivalism, standing alongside architects such as Le Corbusier. ![]() Instead, he revered crusty old cities like contemporary Marseilles and Moscow, where social life was more honest. ![]() He also warned that this shiny veneer of progress was hiding the true state of things. By bringing light to this, he hoped to wake people up from the consumerism of the 19th Century and bring forth some kind of socialist utopia. Buying the latest fad product was just an opium, he thought, dulling senses to the true nature of the world. Through his research Benjamin started to see the arcades as representative of a pivotal moment in social history: the point when society became focused on consumption over production. Whereas Parisians could once visit 300 arcades, now only 30 remain. By Benjamin’s time, though, his type of shopping area was losing custom to the fancy department stores, and in Paris many of them had been obliterated in Haussmann’s city reforms of the 1850s and ‘60s. Such arcades proved hugely popular, spreading across Europe’s capitals as the 19 th century progressed. ![]()
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