ABSTRACT
This chapter builds upon the urban stack as a framework for understanding how and why the composition and configuration of urban data infrastructures matter. It analyzes two case studies and their stacked assemblages: LinkNYC, a public wi-fi infrastructure in New York City, and on-demand service platforms such as Uber and Caviar. The urban stack’s topology helps to understand how control is exercised, and value generated, in and through urban platform infrastructures. Both case studies rely on a distributed infrastructural base, upon which other elements are stacked to create small monopolies on data collection, storage, and analysis. This distributed base externalizes costs and mitigates risk by taking advantage of extant infrastructural conditions. As a heuristic, the urban stack helps to extend analysis “beneath” the interface to examine how heterogenous elements are strung together as a platform infrastructure of urban datafication.
