Approaching Platform Urbanism

This chapter demonstrates the different understandings of platforms before approaching platform urbanism from three different research directions: platform economics, smart cities, and infrastructure studies. Based on these impulses, the understanding of platform urbanism for this thesis is derived.

1. 1.

   Due to the digital nature of platforms digital platform is often used as a synonym. For the sake of simplicity and to save space, only platform is used in this thesis.

2. 2.

   For a detailed etymology of the term platform see Bratton (2015) or Gillespie (2010).

3. 3.

   Capitalization refers to the process of turning something into money, synonymous with the process of monetizing something.

4. 4.

   In light of this Richardson refers to Langley & Leyshon (2017) and their critic on the economic strive of platforms and their goal of generating value in particular in the form of network effects. The criticism of Richardson (2020) therefore remains inconsistent. It continues to be unclear why Richardson is so reluctant to the analysis of platforms as companies, only to endorse the capitalist foundations of platforms in the next breath.

5. 5.

   For comprehensive discussions about the nature of the gig-economy see Woodcock & Graham (2020) or Morgan & Nelligan (2018).

6. 6.

   For a detailed theoretical discussion about sharing economy see Schor (2014); Frenken and Schor (2017).

7. 7.

   Sadowski (2019: 2) summarises three recurring views in contemporary literature regarding data in today’s capitalism: firstly, the value of the data as well as its own creation of value. Secondly, data collection has crucial influence on the operations of the collecting company or government, and thirdly, inequity and exploitation go hand in hand with data systems.

8. 8.

   Although Niebler et al. (2020) identify smart cities as a global phenomenon, the authors see different patterns and concepts comparing the global north and the global south.

9. 9.

   Datafication has different interpretations. In general it can be understood as “simply, the process of using technologies to record and archive information about socially relevant action” (Wagner 2021: 3). Nowadays this is evident in “how digital devices (e.g. smart phones) and platforms (e.g. Amazon, Facebook) capture and process ‘big data,’” (Wagner 2021: 3).

10. 10.

    Datta and Odendaal (2019) even go one step further and argue “the smart city is in itself a territorial colonisation of the digital age” which is “constructed through the geopolitical relations of colonialism, capitalism and globalisation, produced by the legacies of colonial instructions, their knowledge systems, norms, practices and discourses, and thus emerges as a new colony of capital accumulation” Datta and Odendaal (2019: 389–390).

11. 11.

    In this debate, in addition to Harvey (1973) and Lefebvre (1996) also Edward Soja’s (2010) insights on spatial justice are discussed, see for example Taylor and Hall (2013).

12. 12.

    On concrete ideas on how to change smart cities towards more participation and inclusiveness see for example Morozov and Bria (2018).

13. 13.

    According to Verrest and Pfeffer (2019: 1329): “As an emerging academic field, smart urbanism examines how Smart City policies operate in contemporary cities”.

14. 14.

    In academic literature, platform urbanism is sometimes referred to as platform pivot (Barns 2019, 2020a; Lee et al. 2020) in order to highlight the central and transformative nature of platforms. This thesis considers this description too generic and vague and therefore retains the term platform urbanism to emphasise the urban feature.

15. 15.

    Other scholars like Söderström and Mermet (2020) claim that platform urbanism has three distinct dimensions: “materiality, its impact on everyday life and its actual effects” Söderström and Mermet (2020: 2), the latter being the result of a combination of the first two dimensions. This paper disagrees with this categorization, as all three dimensions are inextricably linked and an isolated analysis could lead to a short-sighted analysis.

Authors and Affiliations

1. Tübingen, Germany

   Daniel Weissenrieder

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Weissenrieder .

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