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The platform fix: analyzing mechanisms and contradictions of how digital platforms tackle pending urban-economic challenges

Author

Listed:
  • Alica Repenning
  • Sina Hardaker

Abstract

Digital platforms, such as Google, Amazon, or Instagram, provide a promising spatial fix to urban-economic problems by leveraging technology and data while connecting stakeholders and overcoming spatial barriers to make urban life, consumption, sales, and production more efficient. This article contributes to the debate on digital platforms in economic geography by advancing the emerging lens of the platform fix, adopting a critical standpoint concerning the solutionist viewpoint that presents platforms as a fix for various challenges. The article develops its perspective against the background of 57 semi-structured interviews, 200 conducted standardized questionnaires, and long-term on/offline observations. We aim to provide a platform fix perspective revealing how digital platforms redefine spatial interactions, addressing economic challenges through spatial fixes while becoming established as indispensable infrastructures; however, platform fixes often fail to address underlying issues, leading to platform dependencies and the instrumentalization of actors. Therefore, we suggest a cautious application of urban platforms as solutions and critically evaluate the formation of public–private platform partnerships.

Suggested Citation

  • Alica Repenning & Sina Hardaker, 2024. "The platform fix: analyzing mechanisms and contradictions of how digital platforms tackle pending urban-economic challenges," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(5), pages 615-636.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jecgeo:v:24:y:2024:i:5:p:615-636.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeg/lbae015
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    platform economy; spatial fix; platform urbanism; urban retail; crisis; eBay; Amazon; Instagram;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • P25 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business

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