Gigs, Side Hustles, Freelance: What Work Means in the Platform Economy City/ Blight or Remedy: Understanding Ridehailing’s Role in the Precarious “Gig Economy”/ Labour, Gender and Making Rent with Airbnb/ The Gentrification of ‘Sharing’: From Bandit Cab to Ride Share Tech/ The ‘Sharing Economy’? Precarious Labor in Neoliberal Cities/ Where Is Economic Development in the Platform City?/ Shared Economy: WeWork or We Work Together

Abstract

Over the past year, taxi drivers around the world have protested the appearance of ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft, creating massive traffic slowdowns in London, Warsaw, Hong Kong, Paris, and Berlin. In the most extreme and tragic incidents, some taxi drivers have committed suicide publicly, naming economic desperation brought on by competition with app services as the reason. Proponents of the platform apps point to consumer convenience and lower (albeit heavily subsidized) costs, blaming the excessive regulation of the taxicab industry for its stagnation, but rarely speak to the cost for driver workers. Meanwhile, the ride-hail companies are fighting legal challenges around the world over using 'freelance' contracts to circumvent labour laws. As Uber and Lyft make their IPO debut on the stock exchange, drivers for the services in the U.S. have staged a strike, asking customers to boycott the apps in support of their protests about minimum pay and their status as independent contractors, not employees with full benefits and protections. Whether working for the disrupter or disrupted, the people providing the actual labour of driving customers are trying to address working conditions and wages in a new 'platform economy' city. In the previous issue's Interface, Planning and the So-Called 'Sharing' Economy, authors from around the world considered the challenges of regulating platform apps based on their impacts on neighbourhoods, traffic, and the services they provide. In this issue, scholars and practitioners address how planning might consider these sharing platforms as they define work and the urban economy. The essays describe what the work of the sharing economyboth platform and informalreally is; consider the workers' status as employees, and make a case for planners to engage more with the economic development aspects of growing platform app market.Zwick and Spicer's and Kim's essays are drawn from in-depth qualitative interviews with drivers for informal taxi services. These pieces explore the conditions of work, and what real alternatives are available for drivers, particularly for immigrants in the U.S. The 'better than what I was doing before' experience of drivers in Zwick and Spicer's study suggests that economic restructuring and a loss of stable employment opportunities makes driving as a freelancer more attractive for some workers. Kim points out that as cities accept the 'disruptive' ride-hail apps' presence despite their attempts to evade regulation, immigrant drivers in Los Angeles who were called 'bandits' are facing deteriorating wages with increased competition, while still being considered illegal. INTERFACEKerzhner, considering home-sharing via Airbnb, asks the question; what work happens when the platform doesn't acknowledge workers at all? While there are explicit debates about the drivers for ride-hail services, the hosts of Airbnb are a hidden labour force. The job of readying, renting, and resetting rooms and units often falls to women, whose efforts are under-compensated and may even...

Digitalization and its impact on regional economy transformation mechanisms

“…Reviewing the Russian Federation as a country whose regions have different digitalization levels (Bates et al 2019 ) makes it possible to argue on the following. The lack of concepts and programs for regions’ digital development is among the main problematic points of Russia.…”

Accounting for Absences and Ambiguities in the Freelancing Labour Relation

“…Work in labour studies focuses on the exploitative labour markets of the platform economy, examining the working conditions and agency of those who are servicing platforms such as Uber, Lyft, Amazon Mechanical Turk, TaskRabbit or Airbnb. They argue that the gig economy is institutionalised quicker than regulations, resulting in an exploitative grey area in which insecure labour becomes the industry norm (Bates et al 2019). Liberating companies from accountability to employment laws creates an asymmetry of power between the firm and the worker, leading to the exploitation of individuals in that grey zone.…”

Uber for Electricity: Application of Sharing Economy Model in the Electric Power Sector in India

“…In earlier phases of human evolution or some present tribal societies, people have always shared the resources [18], even when there is no equal participation or contribution. Before the smartphone era, there were "bandit cabs" running exclusively for Korean immigrants by the same ethnic group in the United States [7]. What makes a huge difference in today's world is the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to produce physical realities.…”

“…An unutilized physical car or a spare room in the house can become a digital good and is available for trading or commercial use. The barriers to entry, flexibility in scheduling, and relative autonomy in choosing the load of work are enablers of the sharing economy [7]. However, sharing economy should not be confused with conventional e-commerce platforms like Amazon.…”

“…Bike litter in China or Australia is an example of customer misbehavior [11], [62]. Supplier is a single firm rather than a group of individuals in the case of dockless bike-sharing platforms [45], [62] or office space providers like WeWork [7]. The use of online platforms lowers the transaction costs, reduces the entry barrier for the supplier of a product/service, reduces the switching cost for customers, and helps the operator in generating revenue through the network effects [46].…”