The other day, a friend asked me, “Hey, do you think Mexico City is the new Berlin?” Both of us have been living as expats in London, on and off, for a few years. Both of us, despite feeling an inexplicable attraction to the UK capital, share a deep sense of dissatisfaction with a city that has become (or perhaps always was?) excessively expensive, aggressively gentrified, and whose culture has been industrialised, trivialised, and turned into a playground for Europe’s wealthy offspring. Both of us dream of finding a new city to move to—one that’s affordable, where a young writer or artist could live without needing to work ten-hour days, where an emerging underground scene thrives, and, ideally, where the weather is decent.

Over the years, we’ve had this conversation countless times, reenacting a saga with small variations that mirrors the hundreds of articles circulating online: “Is Athens the new Berlin? Could it be Marseille? What about Lisbon? Barcelona? Bucharest?” The fact that, over time, we’ve cycled through so many contenders is significant in itself, but with the extravagant mention of Mexico City, across the Atlantic, it became impossible not to confront the questions that have been haunting us for years. Is a ‘new Berlin’ even possible? What would it take for it to be? And what lies behind this insatiable search?

Perhaps it’s worth beginning with the obvious: what exactly was the “old Berlin”? The very act of seeking a “new Berlin” presumes that the original no longer exists, or that, if it does, it no longer satisfies. But what precisely are we nostalgic for? Did it ever truly exist? We know the tales: of cheap rents after reunification, of the collective optimism of the 1990s, of an underground culture of electronic music and raves, of a permissive libertarianism thriving within the framework of European social democracy. But beyond these broad strokes, what was it, really? Was there truly a culture of transgression and freedom? And if so, freedom from and for what and for whom? Could it be that much of what we imagine as “old Berlin” is a construct—a kind of earthly Eden, conjured from cheap rents and avant-garde fantasies, a salve for our dissatisfaction with the present-day Berlin and other European metropolises?

The questions multiply when we realise that vagueness serves us better. Who, after all, can offer a definitive account of what Berlin was? Who fully understood the zeitgeist of that time and can articulate what the scene was really about? And perhaps more importantly, why do we assume anyone is qualified to give us such an answer? In truth, the “old Berlin” becomes whatever we need it to be (hence the merits of vagueness): a dream, a vehicle for projecting our desire for a city unspoiled by gentrification, untainted by the erosion of underground spaces. It is, in essence, a myth, Berlin as a mirage, detached from whether it truly existed or whether it can ever exist again.

Like all myths, it belongs to a mythology full of symbols, heroes, and ghosts that reaches back to the origins of humanity: a mythology of renewal, of hope for the arrival of the promised city that spans from the New Jerusalem of the Old Testament to the New Rome of Renaissance humanists, or the New Athens of Horace and his peers. In this modernised version of the myth, the focus shifts to the modern European city, to which a certain class of enlightened creators (not ‘creatives’) migrate from the provinces to immerse themselves in contemporaneity, in vanguard and cosmopolitan culture, to take part in a scene inaccessible to the small and miserable towns from which they came. In this narrative, Paris—the old Paris, the “real” Paris—occupies a central place. Paris is the founding city, if we are to believe in such foundations, of this concept of the modernist city: a place where the disaffected children of an increasingly rootless middle class come into contact with a unique and exclusive internationalist scene, with a culture that sees itself as “advanced.” It’s a story populated by its heroes—Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Walter Benjamin, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Picasso—with its icons—the ‘scene,’ the ‘avant-garde’—and its ghosts—European culture, the bourgeoisie, progress, fascism, globalisation.

Berlin, in large part, inherits that image of Paris as the centre of modern culture and custodian of a unique, underground, and avant-garde scene. Berlin is the renewed myth, Zeus transformed into Jupiter. But what happens to this story? Doesn’t it now feel somewhat strange, corroded by time? Don’t its apostles seem insincere? Isn’t it believed in more out of habit, tinged with scepticism, and driven by a desperate need for that lost world to still have substance and future possibility? And when we look around at the cities we once idealised, what remains of that dream? Berlin, too expensive and gentrified, no longer embodies it. Paris, even more expensive, surrendered its avant-garde long ago. In London one passes one’s days dodging the financial system’s grip. And what of the alternatives? Athens, Warsaw, Marseille, Lisbon—each falls short in its own way: gentrified, unaffordable, lacking robust underground cultures.

Faced with these failures, we should not ask ourselves: where could the next great cultural scene be? Instead, we could pose the more interesting questions: Does a ‘scene’ still exist in the way it did in Paris in the ’20s or Berlin in the ’90s? In fact, does the very concept of a ‘scene’ make sense in our current predicament? Is an ‘underground’ even possible in a world where everything is visible, a world so thoroughly mediated that every new idea, concept, and artwork—if ‘new’ even exists anymore—travels as quickly to Padova as to New York? Can we speak of artistic communities in a world where creators have been replaced by ‘creatives’? What’s the point of moving to a city simply because it hasn’t yet been gentrified, when our very presence accelerates that process? Can any city escape the financial logic of skyrocketing rents in a global economy ruled by property investors seeking standardised returns? Is Athens really any safer from American hedge funds than London?

And even if we imagine a city that escapes gentrification, what would cosmopolitanism even mean in the age of the internet? Can a city maintain a ‘unique character’ in a world where Berlin’s trends are already Montevideo’s? Doesn’t it feel as though the entire world has become one giant province? Do we even need cities anymore? For what? Do they still have something exclusive to offer, some irreplicable character? Or have they all begun to blend into each other, each with the same vintage clothing stores, artisanal coffee shops, and vinyl record boutiques? And even if we believe some do, how do we explain the homogeneity of modern European creatives, the way a London artist resembles one from Milan—when they aren’t, in fact, the very same person, flitting between London, Paris, and Milan?

But in truth, we avoid asking ourselves these questions, the ones that are, at their core, the most important. The only ones that might give real substance to the question of whether a ‘new Berlin’ is possible. Instead, we dream. Where will the next great cultural scene be? We think of Marseille, Mexico City, Lisbon, Bratislava, Málaga, Manchester, and lose ourselves in visions of an idyllic world tailored to each dreamer’s preferences. Yet, for some mysterious reason, none of them quite works. And we don’t know why. I bet each of us could list a multitude of reasons—sometimes they don’t feel artistic enough, or cosmopolitan enough, or there aren’t enough jobs, or the scene isn’t sufficiently developed. Whatever the reason, they leave a strange aftertaste. They lack ‘something,’ though we don’t know what that ‘something’ is, just as we don’t know what exactly we’re looking for when we invoke the idea of the ‘new Berlin.’ And I believe here lies the lesson: we don’t want to know. We need to believe, regardless of whether it’s justified or not.

When we talk about the ‘new Berlin,’ or about what Paris once meant, or when we, as artists or creatives, uphold the myth of these cities as ideal places, we never truly know what we mean. Much like the Romans, who neither fully understood nor cared to understand what Athens truly was, or the Humanists with their vision of Rome. Petrarch, for instance, praised the moral and intellectual virtues of ancient Rome, but his idealised version bore little resemblance to the complex, often brutal reality of Roman history. This deliberate vagueness allowed “New Rome” to function as a malleable ideal, inspiring art, philosophy, and politics without the burden of concrete definition. Similarly, we often overlook what we exclude when we conjure these myths—the looming shadow of war and fascism in Paris, the near extreme poverty endured by so many artists, the systematic exclusion of women and other minorities from cultural circles, the social collapse of German reunification in Berlin, the trauma left by the Soviet Union, or the scourge of widespread drug abuse. In the end, we construct an aura, a vaguely idyllic world, tailored to each dreamer’s imagination that serves as a sanctuary for escape.

And perhaps this is the primary function of the ‘new Berlin’ concept. It is an idea that allows us to dream and believe that a certain kind of city—a city friendly to the arts and culture—might still exist. That not everything has been sold to capital and the flattening effect of social media. That there are still ‘authentic’ places, full of character and identity. Above all, it allows us to believe that the mythology which nurtured our favourite artists and creators—the mythology supposedly alive in Paris and Berlin—still persists, and that what was once possible can be possible again for us. Even though reflecting on the ‘new Berlin’ often comes with questions about the dynamics that turned cities into what Berlin has become (and what exactly do we mean by that?), its secret function is to avoid confronting the depth of the crisis. To deny the fact that our dreams are no longer possible, not in Berlin, nor anywhere else. Avoiding concrete questions spares us from facing the immense economic and cultural degradation of recent years. It lets us sidestep our political impotence and the hopelessness of the present moment. Instead, it allows us to believe in something: the possibility of dissent, the chance to escape the rat race, the comforting dream of a mythology already extinct.

From a perspective less focused on the problems of contemporary society, the concept of the “new Berlin” (and the New Jerusalem, the New Athens, the New Rome) functions simply as a dose of hope. Hope that change is still possible in our lives, that in the next city, things will go well (even if we don’t know, or care to know, what “well” might mean). When life in our current city seems degraded and bleak, or perhaps just indifferent and unappealing, we convince ourselves that somewhere else it must be better. That real existence must be out there. If it isn’t here, it must be elsewhere, or it must have been somewhere before, because we cannot bear the idea that things might remain as they are forever, until the day we die. We need to believe that moving somewhere else could change things. That life works like that—that you change your surroundings, and things fall into place, align themselves with you, become better, more genuine.

And it’s entirely possible that this could happen, that we might find a city where things improve. But it’s worth noting that the absence of relevant questions about the concept of the ‘new Berlin’ serves one purpose above all: to sustain hope.

So, those of us who still move to “new Berlins,” to the great European cities in search of what Baudelaire sought in Paris (whatever that was), in search of an aura, of a life more vibrant, more cosmopolitan, in short, in search of hope, cling to the narrative we’ve built or inherited to justify our belief, even when it falters or is proven false. We arrive in places like Marseille, inevitably disappointed because nothing can compete with the republic of letters we’ve built in our minds, and yet we insist that Marseille is the best city in Europe, that it is the new Berlin, that its artistic community is unparalleled. And this is the moment of overcompensation. We tell everyone we meet how wonderful life in Marseille is, how unique its vernissages and queer parties are—vernissages and parties identical to those in Barcelona, Paris, London, Lisbon.

We’ve all been, or known, one of these people. We become like those backpackers in Southeast Asia seeking transformative experiences, only to find their stories and faith in transformation were misplaced. The thought of admitting we’ve been naïve is too painful: we need to believe. So, we become the most zealous evangelists of what we know to be impossible. The greatest sceptics often make the most fanatical believers.

And so it goes for those of us who move to cities like London or Paris, after years of discovering that the vibrant culture we once dreamed of isn’t the hub of creative activity we’d imagined. To defend our choices (and the economic, familial, and social sacrifices we’ve made) we convince ourselves that the universities here are better, that the culture is unique, and that the idea that to ‘succeed’ (whatever that means…) one must move to a great cosmopolis remains as true now as in Baudelaire’s day. If necessary, we even resort to cruelty, dismissing our compatriots as provincial and backward, as if they’ve missed out on something, just as Picasso and Dalí’s friends missed out by not moving to Paris, or Irish writers who stayed home missed what Joyce found there. All of it to justify that we, by contrast, are living in the right place and not merely chasing an ideal that has long since ceased to be valid, or maybe never was.

But perhaps there’s another way—less glamorous, certainly, but a little wiser. It involves accepting the futility of chasing new Berlins. Embracing the humility of a certain despair. Learning to live without the need for constant escape, without needing the hope of another city, another life. It’s about relinquishing the mythology and laughing, gently, at ourselves for having believed it. Perhaps in that acceptance we find a different kind of freedom.