Platform Urbanism

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Introduction: A Scene on a Train

   • Sarah Barns

   Pages 1-33

3. When the Web Became Platform

   • Sarah Barns

   Pages 35-52

4. City Reverberations

   • Sarah Barns

   Pages 53-74

5. A Momentary Interlude

   • Sarah Barns

   Pages 75-77

6. The Uberisation of Everything

   • Sarah Barns

   Pages 79-98

7. Making Sense of Platform Intermediation

   • Sarah Barns

   Pages 99-125

8. Platform Intermediation as Recombinatory Urban Governance

   • Sarah Barns

   Pages 127-156

9. Intimate Entanglements

   • Sarah Barns

   Pages 157-169

10. City Bricolage: Imagining the City as a Platform

    • Sarah Barns

    Pages 171-191

11. Concluding Reflections: An Ethics of Public Value in an Era of Platform Scale

    • Sarah Barns

    Pages 193-201

12. Back Matter

    Pages 203-232

    PDF

This book reflects on what it means to live as urban citizens in a world increasingly shaped by the business and organisational logics of digital platforms. Where smart city strategies promote the roll-out of internet of things (IoT) technologies and big data analytics by city governments worldwide, platform urbanism responds to the deep and pervasive entanglements that exist between urban citizens, city services and platform ecosystems today.   
 
Recent years have witnessed a backlash against major global platforms, evidenced by burgeoning literatures on platform capitalism, the platform society, platform surveillance and platform governance, as well as regulatory attention towards the market power of platforms in their dominance of global data infrastructure. 
 
This book responds to these developments and asks: How do platform ecosystems reshape connected cities? How do urban researchers and policy makers respondto the logics of platform ecosystems and platform intermediation? What sorts of multisensory urban engagements are rendered through platform interfaces and modalities? And what sorts of governance challenges and responses are needed to cultivate and champion the digital public spaces of our connected lives.

• Smart cities
• Sharing economy
• Big data
• Future cities
• Platforms
• urban geography and urbanism

“In this cogently argued and richly illustrated book Sarah Barns details how platform thinking and capitalism is reshaping cities. Rooted in a historical analysis of how the digital has increasingly mediated urban infrastructures and management, she carefully unpacks how platforms such as Uber and Airbnb, as well as companies such as Google and Softbank, have quickly established global operations to provide services for citizens and governments alike. The result is a compelling account of how new platforms are transforming city marketplaces, urban governance and everyday life.” (Rob Kitchin, Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute)

“Platform urbanism is the first analysis of the digital platforms permeating 21st century cities. It is an important text that provides a framework for theorizing the constant flux of platforms as they transform key components of our everyday lives: economic and social exchange, urban governance, and the data infrastructures that facilitate the circulation of people, goods, and information. Readers will leave with a new understanding of the immaterial, digital fabric forming the foundation of cities today.” (Alan Wiig, University of Massachusetts, Boston)

• Sitelines Media, Sydney, Australia

  Sarah Barns

Sarah Barns is a digital strategist, policy researcher, practitioner and scholar, with a career-long commitment to cultivating digital public spaces in connected cities. Having worked as policy adviser, digital strategist, urban consultant and creative producer, Sarah completed a PhD on the history of digital urbanism in 2010, using mobile media as a platform for experiential histories of urban activism. In 2014 Sarah was awarded an Urban Studies Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for her project ‘Platform Urbanism: data infomediaries, city labs and open data experiments in urban governance’, based at Western Sydney University and Australia’s national data science agency Data61. Today Sarah develops urban data policy and strategy for a range of public and private organisations, as well as being one half of Sydney digital placemaking practice Esem Projects.

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