Our world is increasingly pixelated. It’s now a place where your phone can summon anything from a passport to a dinner date. But, there are still cities—strange, romantic, resilient—that refuse to fully plug in. Places where paper maps don’t just survive, they thrive. Where cash is still folded into calloused palms. Where time is tracked not by push notifications, but by church bells, train whistles, or the rhythm of an old man sweeping his stoop.
This isn’t just retro charm. These are the world’s last analog cities—and they’re not trying to keep up.
Havana, Cuba: The Future That Stalled
In Havana, Wi-Fi is still a luxury—and one you chase. People gather under government-installed routers in public squares, phones tilted upward like petals to the sun. It’s not that Cubans don’t want to connect; it’s that the connection comes slowly, unevenly, and often with surveillance.
But in the absence of always-on connectivity, something else lingers: presence.
A man tunes a battered radio outside his barber shop. Old American cars—fixed with parts not made in decades—rumble by like ghosts in chrome. Directions are offered by hand gestures and laughter, not apps. If you’re lost, you ask. If you ask, you’re drawn in.
This analog heartbeat isn’t just inertia. It’s resilience. It’s a culture built on ingenuity, workarounds, and the conviction that human interaction can’t be downloaded.
Fez, Morocco: Where the Streets Have No Grid
The medina of Fez is a living labyrinth—a thousand years old and barely touched by modern planning. Here, Google Maps will fail you. GPS is a polite suggestion. The only reliable way to find your riad is to follow the scent of mint tea or ask a boy with a wheelbarrow to guide you.
Fez resists digitization not out of nostalgia, but necessity. The alleys are too narrow for cars, the buildings too dense for signal. Deliveries are made on donkeys. The tannery still dyes leather the way it did in the 11th century. Artisans hammer brass and weave wool without electricity.
And yet the city hums with life—markets, mosques, and murmured prayers. Time here has not stopped, but it has bent. In a world where everything is becoming frictionless, Fez insists on texture.
Pyongyang, North Korea: Controlled Clocks and Curated Realities
Pyongyang may look modern on the surface—with its towering monuments, wide boulevards, and pastel-painted buildings—but its digital ecosystem is tightly locked down.
There’s no open internet. Cellphones operate on isolated networks. Foreign SIM cards don’t work. Social media is nonexistent. What passes for connectivity is heavily monitored and carefully curated.
For outsiders, visiting Pyongyang is like slipping into a time capsule—a city where analog isn’t just an aesthetic, but an ideological firewall. Information flows only in one direction. Tour itineraries are rigid. Photos are regulated.
And yet, this enforced analogism raises questions: What does a city lose when it never goes online? What does it retain? For those who live there, the analog world is not a choice—it’s the only option. And that, in itself, makes Pyongyang an eerie mirror to our hyper-connected lives.
Naples, Italy: Chaos Without an App
In Naples, digital life exists—but it’s always second to the street.
Want a pizza? Forget delivery apps. Stand in line at Sorbillo, shout over the counter, wait. Want a cab? Good luck. Want Wi-Fi? Maybe. But the real signal here is human.
Naples thrives on noise, touch, tension. Vendors shout their prices in markets that spill into the street. Friends argue over coffee in bars where nothing gets done quickly. You can find internet, sure—but it won’t help you understand how to cross the street, how to flirt, how to feel the city’s pulse.
This is not a rejection of modernity. It’s a refusal to let algorithms replace instinct.
In Naples, analog isn’t quaint—it’s confrontational. It forces interaction. It demands you be here, now.
Why Analog Still Matters
In a world that’s digitizing everything, these cities offer a counterpoint—a reminder that not everything needs to be optimized, uploaded, or streamed.
Analog cities are slower, yes. But that slowness has soul. It forces you to engage with people, not platforms. To learn the geography of a place not through satellite imagery, but through smells, sounds, and street corners. It teaches you how to be a traveler, not just a user.
And maybe that’s the real gift. In resisting the frictionless future, these cities remind us how to feel things again.
