How to Run a City Like Amazon and Other Fables single pages

351 Pages·2021·23.68 MB·English

Edited by Mark Graham, Rob Kitchin,
Shannon Mattern and Joe Shaw

Meatspace Press
HOW TO
RUN A
CITY LIKE
AMAZON,
AND
OTHER
FABLES

HOW TO RUN
A CITY LIKE
AMAZON, AND
OTHER FABLES

Edited by
Mark Graham, Rob Kitchin,
Shannon Mattern and Joe Shaw

Meatspace Press

How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables
Edited by Mark Graham, Rob Kitchin,
Shannon Mattern and Joe Shaw

Publisher: Meatspace Press (2019)
Weblink: meatspacepress.com
Design: Carlos Romo-Melgar and John Philip Sage
Format: Paperback and pdf/e-book.
Printed by: TradeWinds
Paper: Popset Virgin Grey
Typefaces: Arial, Founders Grotesk, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica
Textbook, HTRACLA Capitals, Monument Grotesk, Union.
Length: 350 pages
Language: English
ISBN (paperback): 978-0-9955776-7-1
ISBN (pdf, e-book): 978-0-9955776-8-8
License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

Contributors (alphabetically): Manuel B. Aalbers, Tooran Alizadeh,
James Ash, Sarah Barns, Gavin Brown, Ryan Burns, Matthew Claudel,
Jeremy W. Crampton, Ayona Datta, Martin Dodge, Leighton Evans,
Jessica Foley, Jennifer Gabrys, Mark Graham, Tony H. Grubesic,
Edward Helderop, Kara C. Hoover, Andrew Iliadis, Kurt Iveson,
Glenn Kaufmann, Rob Kitchin, Agnieszka Leszczynski, Sophia Maalsen,
Shannon Mattern, Harvey J. Miller, Cian O'Callaghan, Nancy Odendaal,
Dietmar Offenhuber, Alison Powell, Lizzie Richardson, Gillian Rose,
Jathan Sadowski, Kalpana Shankar, Joe Shaw, Harrison Smith,
Monica Stephens, Linnet Taylor, Jim Thatcher, Pip Thornton,
Anthony Vanky, Alberto Vanolo, Alan Wiig, Katharine Willis, Matthew Zook.

All rights reserved according to the terms of the Creative
Commons BY-NC-SA license, excluding any product or corporate
names which may be trademarks or registered trademarks of
third parties, and are cited here for the purposes of discussion
and/or critique without intent to infringe. Discussion of such third
party product, corporate or trademarked names does not imply
any affiliation with or an endorsement by the rights holder.

The publisher has endeavoured to ensure that any URL for
external websites referred to in this book are correct and active
at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no
responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee
that these links remain live or that the content is, or will remain,
appropriate for all audiences.

Support for the design and printing of this book came from
Maynooth University and the European Research Council
(ERC-2012-AdG 323636-SOFTCITY). Meatspace Press
wishes to give thanks to The Alan Turing Institute under
the EPSRC grant EP/N510129/1 and the University of Oxford
for incubating this project.

AMAZON
How to Run a City Like Amazon
Mark Graham, Rob Kitchin, Shannon Mattern and Joe Shaw

ACXIOM
You’re Entitled to What the Data
Says You Deserve
Rob Kitchin

ALPHABET
City of Loops
Mark Graham

ANT FINANCIAL
I_am_the_score_machine
Jathan Sadowski

APPLE
Welcome to Jobstown
Sophia Maalsen and Kurt Iveson

BITCOIN
Cryps, Chains and Cranks
Matthew Zook

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA
The Unseen
Jeremy Crampton and Kara C. Hoover

DELIVEROO
Too Much Fulfilment
Lizzie Richardson

DISNEY
The Most Magical Place on Earth
Anthony Vanky

EASYJET
EasyCity
Manuel Aalbers

1

13

101

145

177

205

234

266

289

330

ELSEVIER
The Civic Method
Matthew Claudel

ETHEREUM
Registering Eve
Alison Powell

GOOGLE ADWORDS
Subprime Language and the Crash
Pip Thornton

GOOGLE ARLens
Seeing the City through Google’s Eyes
Leighton Evans

GOOGLE FIBER
There Is No Such a Thing
as Free infrastructure
Tooran Alizadeh, Edward Helderop and Tony Grubesic

GRINDR
Being Xtra in Grindr City
Gavin Brown

GROUNDTRUTH
Monetizing Movement
Harrison Smith

IKEA
Flat-pack Smart Urbanism
Martin Dodge

INSTAGRAM
A City of Digital Engagement
Ryan Burns

PALINTIR
Save the Shire™
Jennifer Gabyrs

446

475

504

529

539

553

570

606

622

654

PINTEREST
Curating a City
Gillian Rose

PORNHUB
Premium Places
Dietmar Offenhuber

SHOTSPOTTER
Safe andSecure Living in Camden
Alan Wiig

SIDEWALK LABS
So You Want to Live in a Pivot City?
Sarah Barns

SIRI
The Semantic City
Andrew Iliadis

SNAPCHAT
Youthful Indiscretions
Monica Stephens

SONY PLAYSTATION
Playmentalities
Alberto Vanolo

SPOTIFY
Streamers
Cian O’Callaghan

STARBUCKS
Potholes and Pumpkin Spice
Kalpana Shankar and Glenn Kaufmann

STRAVA
The Strive City of Tomorrow
Katharine Willis

676

706

725

749

787

872

941

955

1035

1100

TAKEALOT
The Allure of the Frictionless City
Nancy Odendaal

TESLA
Cities Need Mass Transit
Harvey Miller

TINDER
Swipe Right to Welcome,
Left to Reject
Linnet Taylor

TWITTER
Seeking Follows
James Ash

UBER
The Seduction of UberCity
Agnieszka Leszczynski and Rob Kitchin

VODAFONE
The Col and the Black-Outs
Jessica Foley

WHAT3WORDS
Address.Error.503
Jim Thatcher

WHATSAPP
A City of the People, for the People,
by the People
Ayona Datta

YCOMBINATOR
Let’s Make this City an Urban
Product Everybody Wants
Shannon Mattern

1114

1123

1139

1161

1179

1196

1245

1295

1337

HOW TO RUN
A CITY LIKE
AMAZON

Mark Graham, University of Oxford
Rob Kitchin, Maynooth University
Shannon Mattern, The New School
Joe Shaw, University of Oxford

In an article to promote their new book—
‘A New City O/S’—Stephen Goldsmith (a for-
mer Mayor of Indianapolis and Deputy May-
or of New York) and Neil Kleiman (Director of
the NYU/Wagner Innovation Labs) contend
that cities should act more like Amazon to
better serve their citizens.1 They argue that
cities will be more efficient and productive
if they become data-driven, using analytics
and machine learning to parse data about
citizens and city services/infrastructure into
insights that provide a responsive, tailored ex-
perience. Just as Amazon’s online shopping
platform provides a means to order everything

1
Link: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/cities-should-act-more-
like-amazon-to-better-serve-their-citizens

1

a household might need and deliver individ-
ually-specific recommendations, a city ad-
ministration can function as a marketplace
for services and be accessed through a single
point of entry. The complex systems archi-
tecture that would enable this ‘friction-free
experience’ would also provide a means for
the administration to manage itself.

At first sight, Goldsmith and Klei-

man’s argument seems appealing—who
doesn’t want to live in a more efficient and re-
sponsive city? On reflection, however, the arti-
cle prompts some critical questions. Goldsmith
and Kleiman are not simply using Amazon’s
systems architecture and business model as
a metaphor for how cities might be run. Rather
they are promoting the twin ideas that cities
should be run like businesses and city services
and infrastructure should be run by business-
es. In a city ‘run like a business’, the ethos and
logic of city government shifts from a bureau-
cracy serving citizens for the common good,
to a technocracy that adopts business models
and practices to serve individual consumers.
In a city ‘run by businesses’ the provision of
services and essential infrastructure transfers
from public to private delivery.

2

Both ideas have gained much trac-

tion over the last half century and form key te-
nets of urban neoliberalism, in which there is
a transformation from the practices of urban
managerialism to urban entrepreneurialism.
That is, there is a shift from city administrations
that manage an urban commons and seek
to deliver services and infrastructure largely
through their own endeavours, to cities that
compete with one another for resources and
investment, and services and infrastructure are
opened up to market forces through deregula-
tion, outsourcing, public-private partnerships,
and privatisation. Here, the city is no longer the
place that enables markets to function, but the
city itself—its components and its administra-
tion—become a collection of markets.

This translation from public to pri-

vate, from managerialism to entrepreneurial-
ism, has been driven by arguments from the
Right that city administrations are inefficient,
wasteful, and lack sufficient knowledge and
expertise for managing systems in an increas-
ingly complex world, and competition between
private suppliers produces value for money, in-
novation and choice. In turn, the move towards
entrepreneurial approaches alters the mode of

3

4

urban governmentality (the rationality, practic-
es and techniques through which people are
governed) and the nature of citizenship. Here,
there is a shift from citizens having defined civ-
il, social and political rights and entitlements,
who are disciplined to act in prescribed ways,
to consumers with autonomy to choose from
a suite of public service options dependent on
desire and budget, who gain rights through act-
ing responsibly, and are nudged to act in the in-
terests of state and capital. What little changes
are the underlying notions of stewardship (for
citizens) and civic paternalism (deciding what’s
best for citizens) in how states and companies
view their relationship with residents with re-
spect to how cities are run.

The latest phase of urban entre-

preneurialism is the attempt to produce smart
cities; that is, to use digital, networked tech-
nology to manage cities and deliver urban ser-
vices and utilities. Technologies such as urban
control rooms, city operating systems, urban
dashboards and performance management
systems, sensor networks, smart grids, and
intelligent transport systems, it is argued, will
break-down internal administrative silos, pro-
duce better coordination, and leverage insight

5

and value from data to produce more effective
and efficient delivery of services. They will
also improve security, safety and quality of
life, and create improved resilience and en-
vironmental sustainability. The new markets
created will foster local innovation, economic
development and entrepreneurship. Further,
shared economy platforms and thousands of
urban-living apps are already transforming
services such as taxis, tourist accommoda-
tion, housing, food distribution, work space,
and indeed how work is organized and un-
dertaken. Smart technologies are explicitly
designed to be disruptive innovations; that
is, to radically transform how established ac-
tivities are organised and performed. For the
corporations who develop them, the aim is to
disrupt how the state operates and to create
a new market for their products and services,
or to disrupt existing market actors.

As many critics have argued, the

neoliberalisation of city governance and the
creation of smart cities raises a whole series
of social, political and ethical questions. These
include concerns about profit being placed
before people and the environment, widening
inequalities between citizens, a loss of rights,

6

and the erosion of democracy, fairness, jus-
tice and accountability, the privatisation of
public assets and corporatization of surveil-
lance, the application of predictive profiling
and social sorting to deliver differentiated ser-
vices, and a transfer of risk and liability from
the private to public sector. In turn this raises
normative questions about what kind of city do
we want to live in? Do we really want to reside
in cities run like or by businesses?

It is these questions that this book

explores. Our challenge to the contributing
authors was to imagine what cities might be
like if they were run using the technologies,
business models, and ethos of specific com-
panies. In other words, we asked them to ex-
tend Goldsmith and Kleiman’s thesis beyond
Amazon to consider how the city might be
governed and experienced, the consequenc-
es to citizens if the city was run by or in con-
junction with Uber, Disney, Twitter, Tinder,
Ikea, and so on. We gave authors free-rein
to select any company they wished as long
as we avoided duplicates, with most select-
ing tech companies, many of which produce
smart city technologies.

7

Many companies are actively in-

volved in partnering with cities or are deliv-
ering urban services, though others simply
serve urban consumers. In every case, other
similar companies could have been chosen,
and the selections are designed to provide a
thought experiment or grounded discussion of
urban entrepreneurship. In the cases where
product or corporate names may be trade-
marks they are only used for the purpose of
conducting a thought experiment or identifica-
tion and explanation without intent to infringe.

We also gave authors the choice

of writing a short piece of speculative fiction
or a more conventional academic-style pa-
per, or a combination of the two, to illuminate
their thoughts. The majority of authors chose
the speculative fiction approach, most adopt-
ing a science fiction framing, with the story
set in the near future.

As scholars of science fiction have

long noted, the genre is a powerful and engag-
ing medium because it uses extrapolation and
speculation to explore possible worlds and to
encourage the reader to reflect on how those
worlds came into being, how they operate, and

8

9

10