In December 2019 my book Platform Urbanism: Negotiating Platform Ecosystems in Connected Cities was published by Palgrave Macmillan. Part of a Palgrave book series on geographies of media, this book looks at the rise of the platform business model over the past decade (and before that), as an increasingly influential driver of urban transformation and change in an era of big data and social media.
My book is the culmination of a postdoctoral research fellowship I was awarded by the UK-based Urban Studies Foundation, held from 2014-2017 while I was based at Western Sydney University. This body of work included prototyping and developing a number of digital cities initiatives with governments, including dashboard projects, data strategies and smart city initiatives. I also had the opportunity to visit key experiments in urban informatics and data-driven urban science, including NYU’s Centre for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) and the UCL City Leadership Lab. Some of the various publications from this period can be viewed here.
But more about the book….
The basic premise here is that the now-structural design characteristics of digital platforms, underpinned by highly organised ‘platform strategies’ designed to engineer interactivity - must be considered increasingly fundamental to the dynamic organisation of cities. In recent years, platform companies have accelerated their integration into fundamental systems of urbanisation and city transformation - and while attention is on the big players, companies like Uber, Airbnb, and the like, it’s increasingly important that we also pay attention to what are increasingly structural characteristics of platform ecosystems. The systems and rules that govern platform ecosystems are now also systemic to shaping of urban interactions more generally, as the once-clear boundaries between ‘digital’ and ‘physical’ dissipate. As such, platform policy, and the governance of platform ecosystems, needs to be negotiated as a central pillar of contemporary urban policy.
I don’t see the platform business model going away any time soon - it would be good to see greater engagement across urban policy and planning with how platform ecosystems can be designed, or governed, with a view to creating more inclusive and sustainable cities.
See below for the Introductory chapter of Platform Urbanism. Get in touch if you can’t access the full copy through a university library - the book’s price suggests the publisher has primarily university libraries as their intended marketplace, which is unfortunate for me, as I didn’t intend for the ideas in this book to remain enclosed in ivory towers and academic paywalls ;-).
Citation: Barns, S. (2019) Platform Urbanism: Negotiating Platform Ecosystems in Connected Cities. Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan.