Future of Cities: Urban Space and Life in the Age of Platform

Abstract

Digital platforms have already expanded their reach over a broad range of urban services and cemented themselves at the core of urban life by capitalising on their vast troves of data, all of which has allowed them to enter partnerships with city administrations and thereby claim ownership of more and more urban space. Considering the increasing entwine-ment of the digital realm with physical space, facilitated by platform urbanism, the Internet of Things and advance-ments in immersive technologies, this paper recognises and discusses the importance of key democratic features requi-red to tackle urban challenges in a context-specific way, and to protect urban space from platform monopolies – open data utilisation and user participation. The purpose of this paper is to provide new views on the detrimental nature of digital platforms’ urban interventions, as well as to address these issues in the context of the new, spatial or augmented era of the internet – Web 3.0.