Abstract submissions are open for a special issue of Urban Matters journal! Please see below for information and instructions.
Title: Digital Platforms as Urban Infrastructure
Abstract: 250 words
Article word count: 3500-4000 words, including references.
Deadline for abstract submission: June 15, 2025
Deadline for full-article submission: 15 Aug, 2025
Within cities, infrastructure holds a paradoxical position as both simultaneously visible and invisible. As discussed in a recent issue of Urban Matters by Alvarado and Vegliò (2023), the ontology of urban infrastructure transcends the notion of inert objects that merely serve as a backdrop to the unfolding of urban life. Instead, there is an extending understanding that infrastructures are powerful organizers of social life in ways that extend beyond their materiality (Easterling, 2014). Continuing this debate, we call for papers focusing on the socio-spatial coordination capacity of digital platforms- acting as new modes of urban infrastructure in the digital turn (Amin et al., 2018; Datta, 2019).
Platforms rule, as virtually ubiquitous and utterly ordinary. The invisibility and ubiquity of IoT infrastructure takes on a particular turn since it is embedded within, across, and between all other post-industrial infrastructural sectors, such as energy, telecommunications, and transportation through vast volumes of real-time data and the algorithmic capacity to (re)organize urban operations—such as transportation through Uber, housing through Airbnb, and delivery logistics by Amazon. Plantin et al. (2018), Berfelde & Kluzik (2022), and Frapporti (2024) have reflected on platformization of infrastructures and the infrastructuralization of platforms as two-folded, paradoxical role of visible and invisible mundane operations founding the urban process at platform age. However, Frapporti (2024) argue that platform and infrastructure are not necessarily the same, since originally, they “differ in scale and scope” while the today networked computing and changing political sentiments have created an environment in which platforms can achieve enormous scales, co-exist with infrastructures, and, in some cases, compete with or even supplant them.
Despite the presence of this literature, particularly in the field of urban studies, there is still limited scholarship regarding digital platforms from the perspective of urban infrastructure and the spatial, temporal, and social aspects of such platforms. Through the issue, we seek to reflect on the infrastructural role of digital platforms, particularly shaped by corporate-technological entities, from privatized governance, algorithmic power, financial speculation of urban space, gig-labor exploitation, and unregulated platformed workspaces. Simultaneously, we are interested in works that have looked at digital platforms from the lens of urban glitches across different socio-political contexts, leading to urban hacks, opening new spaces of grassroots mobilization, and potentially serving as alternative social and care infrastructure. Besides, as automation and intelligence increasingly empower the algorithms for these digital platforms, we keep the conversation open to further work on contingent effects of ‘intelligent’ platforms and their infrastructural role in urban living.
Topics may include – but are not limited to:
- Examining digital platforms as urban infrastructures, focusing on how they reshape spatial, temporal, and social dynamics.
- Navigating the infrastructural role of major big tech companies, such as Google Map, Uber, Amazon, Airbnb etc.
- Examining infrastructural digital platforms in terms of Intersectionality/embeddedness, and connectivity/contestation to other urban social and logistic infrastructures including care infrastructure, labour infrastructure, governance, policing, public transportation and welfare provisioning.
- Understanding the role of ‘intelligence’ in urban platforms and addressing the anxieties surrounding machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) embedded within them.
- Interrogating the role of social media platforms in creating information/knowledge infrastructures and spaces for civic engagement.
Abstracts can be submitted via the online form till June 15th, 2025. Successful submissions will be notified by the first week of July, 2025.
Contact:
Dr. Niloufar Vadiati
📧 niloufar.vadiati@leuphana.de
Shiva Singh
📧 shivas@iiitd.ac.in
