Though the dominant representation seems to situate platform urbanism in the digital sphere, connecting it to computerised modes of buying and algorithmic mobility systems, this phenomenon is also a matter of people. The logistics of platform urbanism can only exist because of a vast human labour force, which remains mostly hidden from the everyday citizen. These are the people who work in the many transport and distribution centres or operate the numerous vehicles that connect the distribution nodes of platform commerce.[1] This is not a recent phenomenon. Throughout the twentieth century, the distribution sector has been an essential urban employer, with people working, for instance, in peripheral distribution centres, in transhipment facilities at infrastructural nodes or inner-city wholesale markets.

What is new are the large amounts of people working in the ‘logistics of the last kilometre’. This final frontier of contemporary commercial logistics is becoming the workplace for a vast labour force. Not by coincidence. After all, the last kilometre is where the increasing demand for rapid doorstep delivery is concretised, where the logistics of platform commerce encounter the everyday city and citizen. However, the last kilometre is also a highly complex and labour-intensive terrain. It requires the capacity to continually explore new routes and destinations. The working conditions in this last kilometre are not only defined by large corporations but also by the many subcontractors that work in the logistics of platform commerce. As a result, working the last kilometre, even in the same city, can imply that very different labour conditions apply.

The labour of the last kilometre often shares a set of characteristics. It is a well-known story that especially the subcontractors and low-ranking employees of platform businesses are prompted to pre-invest in their own working conditions. It is not unusual that they, often before starting their employment, are required to buy equipment such as delivery boxes, work clothes and digital apparatuses, as well as vehicles such as bikes, motorcycles and cars. Working for platform businesses seems exclusive. Only those that can pre-invest have access to this labour market and become producers of platform urbanism.

One of the most significant flaws for those working in platform businesses is that they lack ‘spaces of appearance’. While the many drivers, deliverers, and service desk employees are crucial contact points between algorithmic business models and citizens, they are not represented in the city. It has become clear that platform business models have the effect of distancing the people working for them from their employers, as well as from public debate and opinion. The people of the platform lack spaces to appear, to have their voices heard.

Cities have always been places where labour relations and conditions have been contested, debated and negotiated. The history of urbanism is larded with labour protests, union actions and negotiations, as well as with collective investments in the conditions and places of work. The same fate must now befall platform urbanism. If platform urbanism is as much about data-driven forms of urban governance and citizen engagement as about technology-driven platform business models, then an intense liaison between these two aspects would seem to be required. Platform urbanism should connect its commercial and its political tenets in order to ensure that the people who produce the ‘platform city’ become, and remain, the subject of public concern.