As demand for e-commerce surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, investors began pouring billions into start-ups promising to accelerate digitization and automation in small-margin, winner-take-all sectors, such as retail, grocery, and dining. I examine two business models that feature prominently in this swell of financial optimism: dark stores and ghost kitchens. Both sacrifice consumer-facing real estate to create logistical spaces for online order fulfillment, and both are predicted to become permanent fixtures of the post-pandemic economic landscape. However, few have commented on the consequences of this future-in-the-making or who is likely to suffer them. The essay therefore anticipates how “going dark” may impact consumers, workers, and urban geographies. I argue that going dark represents a new threshold in the spatial materialities and financial imaginary of platform urbanism, what I call the logistical-urban frontier. I theorize how this frontier threatens historically disenfranchised urban communities, and I conclude the essay with a reflection on the conflicted temporalities of logistical speculation.

随着在 COVID-19 大流行期间对电子商务的需求激增，投资者开始向初创企业投入数十亿美元，这些初创企业承诺在零售、杂货和餐饮等利润微薄、赢家通吃的领域加速数字化和自动化。我研究了两种在金融乐观情绪中表现突出的商业模式：黑暗商店和幽灵厨房。两者都牺牲了面向消费者的房地产来为在线订单履行创造物流空间，并且预计两者都将成为大流行后经济格局的永久固定物。然而，很少有人评论这种未来正在形成的后果或谁可能遭受这些后果。因此，本文预测了“走向黑暗”将如何影响消费者、工人和城市地区。我认为，走向黑暗代表了平台城市主义的空间物质性和金融想象的新门槛，我称之为物流城市前沿。我从理论上分析了这一前沿如何威胁历史上被剥夺权利的城市社区，并以对后勤推测的冲突时间性的反思来结束这篇文章。