Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

6-2024

Abstract

Anyone who has ever used a ride-hailing app in the middle of rush hour “surge pricing” has experienced a painful reality—platform companies once described as “disrupters” now control a critical urban infrastructure and with it the power to extract profits, shape urban mobility markets, and collect millions of data points on drivers, consumers, and urban mobility patterns. The idea of the “platform economy” is now firmly ensconced in scholarly and public discourse. Platform firms, according to Nick Srnicek, are “digital infrastructures that enable two or more groups to interact . . . and position themselves as intermediaries that bring together different users: customers, advertisers, service providers, producers, suppliers, and even physical objects.”1 Srnicek notes that “the platform has emerged as a new business model, capable of extracting and controlling immense amounts of data, and with this shift we have seen the rise of large monopolistic firms.”2 The platform economy is seen to be the dominant economic model of contemporary capitalism, with large technology firms increasingly dominating the US stock market and also dominating public infrastructure. But to understand how this model came to be requires going beyond technologically deterministic explanations that pin the success of firms like Uber or Tesla on visionary founders or algorithms alone. Two recent books go beyond this metanarrative to examine the very local and particular processes by which platform firms transformed from “disruptive” startups into critical urban infrastructures.

Discipline

Geography

Research Areas

Integrative Research Areas

Publication

Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies

Volume

14

Issue

2

First Page

107

Last Page

111

ISSN

2045-4813

Identifier

10.3167/TRANS.2024.140208

Publisher

Berghahn Journals

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.3167/TRANS.2024.140208

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