Daily mobilities with smartphone apps and their failures: A study in urban Guangzhou

Abstract

The key purpose of this article is to provide a nuanced understanding of the platform-city-people nexus shaped by digitally mediated mobilities. This article focuses on urban practices of walking, driving and ride-hailing with mobile technologies and their failures on an everyday basis in urban Guangzhou (a megacity in south China), based on an analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data collected from the fieldwork in 2021. It finds that digitally mediated mobilities can be seen as everyday digital practices which are simultaneously produced and reproduced through everyday encounters with platforms and their breakdowns, places, and people's knowledge, skills, and imaginations in both digital and physical spaces. Moreover, digital platforms, as well as their failures, affect daily mobilities in contradictory ways. On the one hand, digital platforms mediate and reshape the time-space of people's daily mobilities and make people adjust and adapt their practices to the logic of platforms. While on the other hand, they allow people to creatively produce valuable data for themselves and enhance their skills of re-organising their mobilities with smartphone apps efficiently. These findings can advance digital geographies' understanding of the complex, contingent and messy relations between digital platforms, urban spaces and everyday practices.