Playing in Traffic? Exploring the Intersection of Platforms, Agency, and Space in Bicycle Courier Mobilities

Jarvis Suslowicz and Marco te Brömmelstroet

Journal of Urban Technology, 2024, vol. 31, issue 1, 129-155

Abstract: This article explores change in the mobile geographies of bicycle courier work as a result of platform economy influences, with a focus on how agency of movement characteristic of messenger culture is maintained or altered through the use of algorithmic routing and management of the delivery process. A mixed-methods approach based in Amsterdam and Oslo uses participatory geographic Information systems (PGIS) to map bicycle couriers’ spatial preferences in their working environment; semi-structured interviews to approach mobile decision making; and (auto)ethnographic data to consider the embodiment of movement across both case studies. This article provides an updated empirical understanding of couriers’ mobile, urban geography compared with pre-platform messenger work, while examining the role of new organizational technologies on movement using a Lefebvrian spatial framework, emphasizing the gaps between spaces as exploitable by different actors in the delivery work sphere. The results show both a new, extended spatiality of bicycle-based work enabled by associated technologies, alongside both the loss and adoption of new means of appropriating urban and digital spaces resulting from algorithmic control of the delivery process.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1080/10630732.2024.2311636

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