The concept of ‘platform urbanism’ refers simultaneously to the urbanisation of commercial practices that rely upon technology-driven platform business models and to the technological diffusion of data-driven services that allow for new forms of urban governance and citizen engagement.[1] Somewhere between commerce and governance, these platform practices increasingly affect our everyday urban lives. Technology-driven smoothness of access and rapidity of process seem to be the key concepts on which the various forms of platform urbanism are predicated.[2] The idea of a network, understood as the interconnection between businesses, administrations and people, appears to be its preferred organisational form.

One can ask questions about the increasing political influence that platform companies wield on cities, the effectiveness of platform-mediated new forms of urban government, or the effects of platform businesses and politics on our behaviour. As a scholar of architecture and the city, my interest is more in what I would call ‘the places of the platform’. I am curious about the concrete spatial, formal and even material conditions of platform urbanism. In other words, what are the spatialities of platform companies and governance models? What about the reciprocal effects between urban space and algorithmic business and governance approaches?

The fundamental question I want to ask is how the logics of platform commerce and governance become urbanised in spatial, material and formal terms. A direct response would be that this question is obsolete since platform practices largely articulate themselves in the digital realm. The numerous websites, apps and blogs suggest that platform practices urbanise as web features, in the form of digital maps, roads and environments – often identified with quite old-fashioned urban concepts such as fora, shops and market places. From this perspective, platform urbanism seems to be a digital occurrence that augments – to use Lev Manovich’s words — the tangible and physical reality of the city.[3] Some will even claim that platform urbanism has the capacity to erase the rough, conflicting and slow character of the physical city. Platforms can make us forget about the meagre offering of commodities in a neighbourhood, the limited provision of public transport or the difficulty of gaining access to public administrations. Erasing the resistant, contradictory and ambiguous characteristics of the historical city seems to be part and parcel of platform urbanism.

This idea of platform urbanism as the digital and congenial ‘other’ of the historical city is only part of the story. Sooner or later, algorithmic businesses and governance models encounter the physical city and need to negotiate their existence in urban space. Looking at platform urbanism from this angle, another feature becomes evident: its parasitic character. While under the influence of platform commerce, new sites and buildings – think, for instance, about the many distribution centres – are being constructed in urban territories when platform practices encounter the city they usually capitalise on already existing urban spaces.

The examples of this parasitic attitude of platform urbanism are myriad: from the small-scale parcel collection desks in post offices, supermarkets and newspaper stores to the covered galleries and passages where delivery bikers gather to wait for a new order to the large-scale kiss-and-ride parking zones at airports, train stations and boat terminals that Uber drivers use as pick-up points. These various urban spaces become a fertile backdrop for platform practices. Time and time again, platform urbanism seems to rely on these already existing built environments to unfold its logics. To put it differently, it seems that platform urbanism cannot exist without the infrastructures and spaces that another urbanism has produced.

This parasitic character points to the vulnerability of platform practices and the urbanism that results from them. Indeed, the fact that platform practices only parasitically relate to existing urban spaces also implies that their agency in the development and governance of these spaces is limited. Despite their substantial effect on the urbanity of airports, train stations and ferry terminals, the many drivers of platform businesses often remain silent voices in the decision-making processes about the governance and development of these spaces. When authorities decide to change the organisation and management of these transport spaces, the actors of platform urbanism have no other choice than to comply with these decisions. In other words, those who are strong actors in the realm of platform urbanism might be mute voices in the urban spaces they practice.

This distanced relation between the digital and physical spaces of platform urbanism concerns me as a scholar of architecture and the city. In many platform businesses, physical spaces and infrastructures seem to be taken as a given, a sort of natural background that can be intensively used to deploy business practices. A combination of intense use and an unengaged relation to the governance of the city seems to characterise the majority of platform businesses. Such a weak relationship between urban practice and urban form, between citizens and cities, is not new. There are ample examples of groups of citizens in history that had no say in the governance of their cities. However, the question is whether, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, such a relation is desirable.

This weak relation is not the entire story of the role of physical, material and formal urban spaces in platform urbanism. The practices of platform urbanism also have a strong capacity to recodify our understanding of public spaces, infrastructures and buildings. By engaging with the spaces of the city, some of the actors of platform urbanism convincingly point to innovative ways of conceiving our cities. A good example is the role that transport by bike has started to play in our contemporary cities. The many delivery bikers conveying food and goods illustrate that this mode of transport has a promising urban future. Another case can be seen in the many small collection points for parcels that have sprung up. They demonstrate that after decades of promoting car-based mass distribution in the form of supermarkets and shopping centres, the localised, smaller-scale distribution of goods might be a more desirable and sustainable urban model. Though the implications for the design of cities are not yet fully clear, platform urbanism can act as an alternative lens for future urban scenarios.