DP-SSI

The Role of Digital Platforms: Exploring the Socio-Spatial Implications in the context of the Italian region

A PhD project by Deepa Joshi, Visiting Researcher from the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies(DAStU), Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Funded by the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR)

Supervisor/Host: Valeria Fedeli / Constance Carr, Markus Hesse

Fulfillment Centre at Rondissone, Piedmont, Italy (Photo: Joshi, 2024)

Project Summary:

Currently, our cities are meeting with new forms of urban conditions that are produced by data, technologies and managed by a new category of economic actors: Digital Platforms (DPs). Typically, they are characterised by the networks, automation, circulation of goods, people, information and money across the planet. In development agendas (both national and international), they are often framed as ‘Digitalisation tools’ and acknowledged as a necessary means to address the complex issues of equity, social cohesion and sustainability. Concerning this phenomenon, the critical inquiries in literature , provide useful references for urban research by questioning the credibility of data itself, data-driven methods, technology-based governance structure, uneven distribution of labour and work and the capital accumulation by platforms (Carr and Hesse 2022; Kenny and Zysman 2019; Kitchin et al. 2017; Ash et al. 2018; Graham and Dittus 2022; Srnicek 2017,Artioli 2018).

 

In the urban planning and policy domain, DPs present themselves as important drivers in developing urban processes. On a broader level, DPs are prominently urban-based actors with a ‘technology-based solutions’ rationale. For policy framing and decision-making, DPs have emerged as guiding actors for city investments, public policy implementations, knowledge production and know-how processes for governments and institutions. However, at the same time, they are not without critics, and numerous questions about their operationalisation remain. They appear as distant entities from local urban conditions and places but are simultaneously visible through their diverse infrastructure arrangements with new operational setups and functional reuse of existing spatial typologies, often in the periphery of the urban regions.

 

Against this background, this PhD study is positioned at the confluence of three key thrust areas of our current time i.e. 1) digitalisation processes in e-commerce retail and logistic segments; 2) technology-based urban governance structure and institutional relations; 3) new kind of physical infrastructural arrangements and spatial typologies.

 

This research takes the Amazon Platform as the key element for analysis and explores its socio-spatial effects on the Italian regional context. The broader aim is to trace the operational sites of the Amazon platform that often occupy the spaces that are next to big cities. In particular, it explores the role of the Amazon platform through the vantage point of e-commerce retail and logistic functions. The key objectives of this study are 1.) to understand Amazon’s operational characteristics, their infrastructure needs and interaction with local institutions and other actors 2) to investigate the major location sites of Amazon's process of settling and development stories in the context of Italian regions and 3) to explore, How some cities in Italy are selling to Amazon platform some of their services?