Negative urbanism: unknowability, illegibility and ambivalence in the platform city

Abstract

On-demand digital platforms are shaping processes of urbanisation by transforming governance processes, worker subjectivities and consumption practices. However, claims about such transformations risk ignoring the diverse and often underspecified ways that evaluations about platform urbanism are being made. This paper grapples with our incapacities to know platform urbanism, not as pragmatic barriers that can be overcome, but as limits to be reckoned with. Reflecting on fieldwork encounters with people speaking about on-demand platforms from diverse governance, production and consumption perspectives, the paper foregrounds experiences of unknowability, illegibility and ambivalence in platform urbanism. These concepts invite a rethink of the subjectivities involved in evaluating platform urbanism and they provoke questions about the operation of power. The paper argues that attending to these ‘negatives’ provides an alternative counter-political perspective that apprehends both the instability of politics and our practices of judgement. Ultimately, admitting a more aporetic understanding of platform urbanism is not about hobbling our capacities to intervene as urban theorists, but about questioning what intervention might look like and what might be possible.