Playing in Traffic? Exploring the Intersection of Platforms, Agency, and Space in Bicycle Courier Mobilities

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores change in the mobile geographies of bicycle courier work as a result of platform economy influences, with a focus on how agency of movement characteristic of messenger culture is maintained or altered through the use of algorithmic routing and management of the delivery process. A mixed-methods approach based in Amsterdam and Oslo uses participatory geographic Information systems (PGIS) to map bicycle couriers’ spatial preferences in their working environment; semi-structured interviews to approach mobile decision making; and (auto)ethnographic data to consider the embodiment of movement across both case studies. This article provides an updated empirical understanding of couriers’ mobile, urban geography compared with pre-platform messenger work, while examining the role of new organizational technologies on movement using a Lefebvrian spatial framework, emphasizing the gaps between spaces as exploitable by different actors in the delivery work sphere. The results show both a new, extended spatiality of bicycle-based work enabled by associated technologies, alongside both the loss and adoption of new means of appropriating urban and digital spaces resulting from algorithmic control of the delivery process.