“In the Ruins of Futures Past: Potentiality, Planning, and the Contested Revival of Cyprus’s Ghost City”

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Since the de facto division of Cyprus in 1974, the former resort town of Varosha has been held hostage, a pawn in negotiations. For 46 years, highrise hotels rusted on pristine beaches inside a Turkish military camp, awaiting a political agreement that would restore the town to its 30,000 displaced owners. In October 2020, the surprise opening of this ghost city turned a site of dark tourism into a space producing increasingly contested visions of what the town’s future should be.