Black Friday has become something more than a shopping event. It has become an urban phenomenon, weaving itself into the rhythms of cities as diverse as São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Barcelona.

In New York, where I started the month, Black Friday still feels distinctly American, tied to its origins in the 1960s when Philadelphia police used the term to describe the chaos caused by suburban shoppers flooding the city after Thanksgiving. But even here, the event has stretched. It’s no longer just a Friday. Retailers began promoting “Black Friday deals” weeks before Thanksgiving, turning November into an endless cycle of countdowns and doorbuster emails. The city’s already buzzing streets seemed to hum with a new kind of energy, one driven not by festivity but by urgency. Even Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, with its high-end flagship stores, leaned into the spectacle, offering discounts that blurred the line between exclusivity and mass appeal.

From there, I flew to Buenos Aires and São Paulo, where Black Friday has taken on an entirely different tone. In Argentina and Brazil, it’s less about tradition and more about economic necessity. “Black November” has become a fixture of the urban calendar, driven largely by e-commerce giants like Mercado Livre and American retailers looking to tap into the country’s consumer base. These are cities of striking contrasts, wearing Black Friday like a mask. The sleek malls and tech-driven logistics centers hum with activity, while street vendors and small shops try to compete with hastily printed signs and hand-written flyers promising “Black Friday prices.” For many South Americans, these sales are a chance to stretch thin budgets, especially in an economy grappling with inflation. The result is a city temporarily reshaped by commerce, its already frenetic pace amplified by the promise of deals.

By the time I got back home to Barcelona the week before the U.S. American Thanksgiving, the phenomenon became even more surreal. In Barcelona, Black Friday has no cultural anchor. There’s no Thanksgiving here, no history of post-holiday sales to draw from. And yet, the city has embraced it wholeheartedly, turning parts of the urban fabric into stages for global consumerism. Passeig de Gràcia, with its mix of luxury boutiques and high-street brands, felt like it had been imported wholesale from another world. Storefronts blared “Black Friday Week” promotions, and e-commerce ads followed me everywhere. What struck me most was how seamlessly this American export had adapted to a European context, blending into Barcelona’s Mediterranean pace while quietly reinforcing the rhythms of globalized retail.

If the global reach of Black Friday shocked me on three continents this November, its expansion into the Middle East, Asia, and even Australia adds another layer of complexity to the phenomenon. In the Middle East, where cultural and religious contexts often reshape imported traditions, the event has been rebranded as “White Friday” to better align with local values. Cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Riyadh transform into arenas of commerce during this time, their sprawling malls buzzing with activity. Platforms like Noon and Amazon have capitalized on this, offering discounts that rival the chaos of their Western counterparts. Even the sleek, futuristic architecture of Dubai’s retail centers—places like the Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates—seem tailor-made for this kind of global consumer spectacle, reinforcing the city’s image as a hub for transnational commerce.

In Asia, the integration of Black Friday into urban life varies dramatically. While China largely sidesteps it in favor of its homegrown juggernaut, Singles’ Day, countries like South Korea, Japan, and even India have found ways to adapt it to local contexts. Seoul’s densely packed urban neighborhoods hum with Black Friday promotions, often targeted at younger consumers who are deeply plugged into global retail ecosystems. In India, where the shopping calendar revolves around festivals like Diwali, Black Friday has carved out a niche in the urban centers among aspirational middle-class consumers eager for deals on international brands. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, the event feels more subdued—retailers frame it as a global phenomenon, but its impact is softened by Japan’s already thriving seasonal sales culture.

Even Australia, thousands of miles from the holiday’s origins, has embraced Black Friday with surprising enthusiasm. Major cities like Sydney and Melbourne see local retailers and international chains alike joining the fray, using the timing to bolster pre-Christmas sales. The Australian summer adds a curious twist—while Americans huddle in coats to line up outside stores, Australians navigate beach weather and crowded shopping districts for deals. Here, Black Friday merges seamlessly with the Australian retail calendar, yet it also feels like a cultural oddity, its American roots completely detached from the context in which it’s been adopted.

What’s remarkable is how these regions, with their wildly different urban textures and cultural histories, have all absorbed Black Friday into their rhythms. The Middle East, with its gleaming malls and hyper-modern public spaces, amplifies the consumerist spectacle, while Asia and Australia reflect the adaptability of urban economies eager to tap into the global flow of goods and capital. In every instance, Black Friday reveals a fascinating interplay between globalized commerce and the specific cultural and spatial dynamics of cities. It’s not just about the discounts; it’s about how cities—whether in the deserts of the Gulf, the dense sprawl of East Asia, or the sunlit streets of Sydney—are reshaped by this annual tide of consumption.

From an urbanist perspective, the spread of Black Friday is about more than shopping; it’s about how cities absorb and reflect global culture. Each city I visited this month—12 in all across three separate continents—engaged with Black Friday differently, but all shared a common thread: the way it reshaped their public spaces and rhythms. In New York, it’s part of the city’s identity, woven into its role as a global shopping capital. In Buenos Aires, it highlights the contradictions of an urban economy where tech-driven commerce thrives alongside informal markets. And in Barcelona, it feels like a cultural afterthought, one that exists simply because the machinery of global capitalism demands it.

The e-commerce oligarchs—Bezos and his ilk—must laugh themselves to sleep every November, watching the world fall into step with their algorithm-driven feeding frenzy. These aren’t innovators anymore; they’re empire builders, pulling the levers of global commerce with a cold precision that would make even 19th-century robber barons blush. Bezos doesn’t need Thanksgiving, tradition, or gratitude—he needs data points, consumer profiles, and shipping routes optimized to the millisecond. Black Friday, White Friday, Black Week, Black Month—whatever you want to call it—isn’t a celebration of abundance; it’s a planetary chessboard where citizens are pawns, logistics hubs are rooks, and every checkout click is another checkmate. The genius—or maybe the audacity—is in how they’ve turned the whole world into a marketplace, collapsing distinct culture and geography into a uniform grid of endless consumption. And while Bezos counts his billions, urban planners and local merchants scramble to clean up the mess left by this algorithmic juggernaut. 

What’s particularly striking is how this retail phenomenon exposes the inequalities within these cities. In Buenos Aires, the divide between the polished malls and the informal street markets felt especially stark. Black Friday deals were marketed to everyone, but they were accessible only to those who could navigate the digital ecosystems of online sales or afford to shop in the malls. Similarly, in New York, Black Friday might bring discounts, but it also magnifies the wealth gap, as high-end stores and mass-market retailers cater to very different segments of the population. Even in Barcelona, a city that prides itself on its walkability and communal spaces, Black Friday turns public streets into little more than conduits for private consumption.

This November, I saw uniquely how Black Friday has become more than just a global retail event. It’s a mirror for the cities it touches, reflecting their economic dynamics, the commercialized oppression of their local culture, and their increasingly subordinated roles within a globalized world. What began as a single day tied to a uniquely American holiday has become a season, a spectacle, and an unsettling reminder of how deeply consumerism has embedded itself into urban life everywhere.