Navigating platform urbanism

Shenja van der Graaf and Pieter Ballon

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2019, vol. 142, issue C, 364-372

Abstract: The smart city imaginary has become a recurring theme within critical urban geography and entails a distinct set of rationalities. Here, we are interested in grappling with the current ‘place’ of smart cities in the context of what seems to be an emerging platform urbanism, thereby highlighting a complex platform-based ecosystem encompassing private and public organisations and citizens. Our point of departure is the operationalization of three intertwined trends associated with the conceptualizations of participation, mediatisation and (multi-sided) platformisation. Through the examination of (social) traffic and navigation application, Waze, we explore manifestations of (contested) dynamics in mobility practices occurring between commerce and community in the public space of the city. The preliminary findings point to the emergence of new socio-spatial constructs which afford a better frame of ‘what is going on’, challenging the smart city framework as a planning and development paradigm. In putting forward the notion of public value and ownership, it is our aim to prompt a critical debate about platform urbanism made explicit by a driving politics that offers a window to a future driving world, urging cities and governments to anticipate and mitigate (un)intended consequences.

Keywords: (social) navigation applications; Participation; Platformisation; Mediatisation; Urban planning; Smart city (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162517318528
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:tefoso:v:142:y:2019:i:c:p:364-372

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2018.07.027

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().