Challenges to Democratic RuleMaking Authority and Legitimacy Urban platforms have also disrupted existing power and legitimacy paradigms in cities, owing to the nature of platforms as rule-setting monopolies and as collectors and processors of vast quantities of urban data in ways that exceed state capabilities. As Sadowski and Pasquale describe, platform business models are uniquely premised on network effects and monopoly power making them “no longer market participants” but “market makers, able to exert regulatory control over the terms on which others can sell goods and services.”10 This sentiment is echoed and furthered by Soderstrom and Mermet who articulate the view that platforms’ monopolistic control of “code and data” position them as a rival to government rule-making authority: …digital platforms, through their ubiquity and the control they have over code and data, produce a corporatism of governance in which platform companies are increasingly in control.11 Urban platforms then, in addition to their impacts and externalities, also challenge fundamental democratic notions of who decides and who makes the rules in cities. Who is in charge of directing traffic on city streets? Waze has greater ability to reach and route drivers12 than any detour sign installed by a department of public works or announcement from a transportation official. Who decides where neighborhoods are and what they are called? Google Maps can now rename and relabel neighborhoods with more authority than any planning department map or city council resolution (even if they get the spelling wrong)13. Who keeps track of how many people are in the city, how they move through it, and what points of interest they visit? Platform-captured location data can produce more accurate and up-to-date vehicle counts on city roads than the latest traffic 10
Sadowski, “Who Owns the Future City?”
11
Söderström and Mermet, “When Airbnb Sits in the Control Room: Platform Urbanism as Actually Existing Smart Urbanism in Reykjavík | Sustainable Cities.”
12
Lisa W. Foderaro, “Navigation Apps Are Turning Quiet Neighborhoods Into Traffic Nightmares,” The New York Times, December 24, 2017, sec. New York, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/nyregion/trafficapps-gps-neighborhoods.html.
13
Jack Nicas, “As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume,” The New York Times, August 2, 2018, sec. Technology, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/technology/google-maps-neighborhoodnames.html.
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Harvard Kennedy School
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