023 Volume 14 No 1

The Algorithm and the City: Platform Labour and the Urban Environment

The use of algorithms for monitoring and predicting consumer behaviour and controlling work and workers grew exponentially in the second decade of the 21st century, doubling between 2016 and 2019 in the UK. This timely collection brings together scholarship on urbanisation from South and East Asia and Latin AMerica as well as from across Europe to analyse the evolution of platformisation and describe some of its impacts on urban spaces, identity and working life at the moment cities were struck by the impact of the coronavirus epidemic. It provides a vital underpinning for understanding the explosive changes currently taking place.

Contents

The algorithm and the city: platform labour and the urban environment

by Ursula Huws

Beyond the ‘salary institution’: on the ‘society of performance’ and the platformisation of the employment relationship (pp. 15-31)

by Federico Chicchi

Devaluation of cultural capital on online platforms and the changing shape of the social space

by Thomas Höhne and Martina Sproll

The city as an algorithmic formation: insights from patent data

by Lungani Hlongwa

Counting ‘micro-workers’: societal and methodological challenges around new forms of labour

by Paola Tubaro, Clément Le Ludec and Antonio A. Casilli

On-demand platforms and pricing: how platforms can impact the informal urban economy, evidence from Bengaluru, India