Governing the Infrastructural, Spatial, and Social Consequences of Urban Digital Food Delivery Platforms

Mosen Farhangi, Harald Rohracher and Gunilla Meurling
Additional contact information
Mosen Farhangi: Sustainable Societies, Swedish Environmental Research Institute (IVL), Sweden
Harald Rohracher: Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University, Sweden
Gunilla Meurling: Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University, Sweden

Urban Planning, 2025, vol. 10

Abstract: Digital food delivery platforms (DFDPs) are transforming how food is distributed and consumed in cities, but also how urban space, infrastructure, and labor are organized. This article examines how DFDPs affect urban infrastructure in cities by analyzing their spatial, logistical, and governance impacts. Drawing on interviews with municipal officials, platform companies, and civil society actors in three Swedish cities, as well as document analysis and literature review, the study explores how DFDPs challenge conventional planning and regulatory frameworks. Using the lenses of spatial inequality, platform urbanism, and anticipatory governance, the article investigates how platforms operate through hybrid infrastructures that can affect land use, public space, and spatial equalities. While municipal responses remain fragmented and reactive, emerging experiments offer glimpses of more inclusive and future‐oriented governance. The article suggests that urban planning approaches need to recognize DFDPs as infrastructural actors and integrate them into coherent regulatory strategies.

Keywords: anticipatory governance; digital food delivery platforms; gig economy; last‐mile delivery; platform urbanism; spatial inequality; Sweden; urban infrastructure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/10623 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:urbpla:v10:y:2025:a:10623

DOI: 10.17645/up.10623

Access Statistics for this article

Urban Planning is currently edited by Tiago Cardoso

More articles in Urban Planning from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().