“Late capitalism” is one of those terms that started out in academia, but slowly found a way into casual usage with a simplified meaning. Since the 2010s, it has appeared in social media and internet culture to mock and criticize the absurdities and tragedies of capitalist systems in the modern day. In this way, few things could be seen as more worthy of late capitalism than Costkea Way, located in the metropolitan area of Edinburgh.
The capital and second-largest city of Scotland got its first Costco and Ikea stores mere meters from each other, in the 2000s, and part of the development required that a street was built to connect both. Portmeanteauing COSTco and iKEA, Costkea Way was born, and mentions of the street’s peculiar name can be found online as far back as 2005. While the street itself might seem fairly unremarkable, its name could make it unique in the world as it comes entirely from not one but two brands with massive pop culture recognition.
The United States-based Costco is the world’s third-largest retail company, while Swedish Ikea is known as the world’s largest seller of furniture and consumer of wood (estimated to be one percent of all timber production). Each have a large presence in the United Kingdom as of 2024, with the big-box shops numbering around 20, while IKEA has 22.
