Urban trends: Inhabiting automatic futures

Abstract

To answer the question “What is the future of our cities?” we must look for answers outside institutional perimeters. In this intervention I explore the intersection between platform capitalism and urbanism, and analyze the impact of digital platforms and big tech companies on the design, governance and use of urban space. I work on the juxtaposition of two main strands of literature, that on smart cities and that on platform urbanism. The intervention considers the nexus between cities and platforms as a kind of new layer of the digitalization of the urban driven by smart urbanism, focuses on the processes of platformization of urban life, and explores the idea of platform urbanism as a “beyond” of the smart city.