Introduction

Platforms represent an increasingly hegemonic business model, predicated on the capacity to realise exchange value not through direct production of goods or services but through building and mobilising networks of producers, distributors, and consumers, constructing and shaping the activities and practices of participants in such networks. Platforms are also increasingly prevalent as an urban phenomenon, in part because cities provide the largest and richest markets for their services. But their importance goes far beyond the general phenomenon of ‘platform capitalism’ occurring in an urban setting. Instead, digital platforms fundamentally, and unevenly, reconfigure urban space and life itself. This book interrogates the emergence of ‘platform urbanism’, bringing together contributions from across a number of disciplines, including geography, innovation studies, urban planning, and media studies. It takes the broadest possible scope, examining how platform urbanism transforms urban infrastructure, governance, knowledge production, and everyday life.