Contested and captured: the paradox of Citywalk and digital disconnection in platformized China

This article critically examines Citywalk as a media-cultural practice among youth in China, foregrounding its contradictory role in the platform-mediated urban landscape. Based on ethnographic fieldwork including participant observation and 27 semi-structured interviews, it explores how Citywalk emerges as a form of resistance to the algorithmic commodification and spatial control inherent in platform capitalism. Citywalk participants attempt to reclaim time and space, cultivating disconnection from digital acceleration and reconnecting with the ‘nearby’ textures of urban life. However, this practice of disconnection is itself co-opted and datafied by the same platforms it seeks to resist, turning embodied experiences into algorithmically managed and commodified digital content. This paradox reveals how the romantic, political, and economic figures of the stroller converge in contemporary China’s platform urbanism: disconnection becomes a fleeting assertion of autonomy, yet is persistently captured by the commercial logics of digital platforms. The study highlights the fragile nature of cultural resistance within a political economy of algorithmic visibility and raises critical questions about the limits of urban autonomy and the enduring power of digital commodification in shaping everyday urban life.