Cadernos Metrópole 64: Platform urbanism

The Scientific Editors and Editorial Committee of the journal Cadernos Metrópole invite researchers from areas of knowledge that approach the urban and regional issue to send texts to the organization of volume 27, number 64, about the theme

 

Platform urbanism

Editors: Luiz César de Queiroz Ribeiro and Nelson Diniz



In the first quarter of the 21st century, capitalism underwent a new round of radical transformations that were even more disruptive than those of the 1970s. There are many ways of designating these recent transformations: “financialized capitalism” or “finance-dominated capitalism”, “rentier capitalism”, and “surveillance capitalism”, among many other possibilities.

Without losing sight of the other possibilities, this issue of Cadernos Metrópole intends to focus on “platform capitalism” and its repercussions on the social production processes of the urban and regional space. Such repercussions have given rise to concepts like “platform urbanism”, “digitization of urban space”, and “urbanization of the Internet”. It is important to mention that this theme has precedents in studies about the “flexible accumulation regime”, “network society”, and “technical-scientific-informational environment”.

However, the first decades of the 21st century have also brought significant novelties, as the technical-scientific revolution has achieved a new level: the Internet of things, big data, machine learning, augmented reality, artificial intelligence… These and other technological innovations have been revolutionizing, once more, the ways in which humanity experiences its relationship with time and space.

A “new urban experience” is underway, connected with the “platformization of capitalism”, which cannot be understood without considering other factors of change, starting with the high degree of autonomy of fictitious capital. We are facing a new historical phase: “financial-informational dominance”, which penetrates all dimensions of social life. It has been precisely within the framework of this new phase that a massive volume of overaccumulated capital has shifted into the realm of investments in digital platforms. Besides the consolidated “Big Techs” like Amazon and Google, in the wake of the 2008 crisis, a series of “application companies” have started to impose their business model, based on algorithmic rationality, the new “digital-informational machinery”, and monopolistic control of georeferenced technologies. Uber, one paradigmatic case, with its passengers and goods transportation platform, has opened space to a broad debate about “Uberization”.

For all of the above, we welcome papers that analyze the impacts of the platformization of capitalism on the social production of space. How does the expansion of digital service platforms affect the mechanisms for capturing urban rents and the functioning of real estate markets? How do their dynamics strengthen trends of commodification and financialization of cities? Are short-term rental digital platforms, such as Airbnb, really influencing real estate prices? Are they boosting gentrification processes? How can we describe and analyze the “spatial strategies” corresponding to the “business models” of different digital platforms? How do they affect the social and occupational structure of Brazilian cities? How can we conduct comparative studies about the action of digital platforms in the main cities of Brazil and the world?

We should also bear in mind that these issues have much in common with the debate about “logistic urbanization” and, therefore, with reflections on the links between extraction, logistics, and finance. Either in the case of e-commerce or in the sphere of other economic activities, what happens in the field of logistics has become central to accumulation processes, requiring a new leap of quality in the management of spatial “fixed elements” and “flows”.

Furthermore, some authors argue that the idea of “urban extractivism” or an “extended concept of extractivism” is pertinent to suggest that the very logic of extraction overflows and reaches other sectors, capturing or “extracting” incomes, for example, from the indebtedness of families and the working classes. In other words, the “liabilities” that result from alternative (“financialized”) forms of guaranteeing social reproduction are converted into “assets” in the hands of banks and financial institutions. The debate about “assetization” or “financialization 2.0” derives from this. Furthermore, many approaches investigate how this logic captures informality.

In short, this issue of Cadernos Metrópole intends to collect theoretical and empirical contributions revolving around those issues, considering that we are dealing with a new frontier – an extremely important one – of transformation of life in the cities of the 21st century.



Deadline to send manuscripts: DECEMBER 10, 2024

 

INSTRUCTIONS TO THE AUTHORS

 

SCOPE AND EDITORIAL POLICY

The Journal Cadernos Metrópole is published three times a year and focuses on the debate on issues related to urbanization processes and the different forms that the urban question assumes in the contemporary reality. It is targeted at the academic community in general, especially the areas of Architecture and Urbanism, Urban and Regional Planning, Geography, Demography and Social Sciences.

The Journal publishes texts authored by researchers and scholars who study urban themes and discuss the effects of socio-spatial transformations on the conditioning of the cities’ political-institutional system, and also challenges to the adoption of management models based on urban governance. The Journal does not publish texts authored by undergraduate students.

The Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons License of the type Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

This license allows others to remix, adapt, and build upon the material for non-commercial purposes. Although new materials must give appropriate credit and may not be used for commercial purposes, users are not obliged to license derived materials under the same terms.

The Journal offers free and immediate access to its content, as it follows the principle that making scientific knowledge available to the public for free enables greater international democratization of knowledge.

The Journal does not charge submission, publication or any other kind of fees on its processes. It is a scientific vehicle targeted at the Brazilian scientific community.

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Journal Cadernos Metrópole has a thematic nucleus, with a specific Call for Papers, and a nucleus of free themes related to the areas mentioned above. Thematic texts must be sent within the established deadline and must comply with the requirements of the Call for Papers, while free texts are received by the journal continuously.

The papers can be written in Portuguese, Spanish, English or French.

Papers submitted to Cadernos Metrópole must be submitted through the link https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/metropole/about/submissions.

Papers must NOT contain any kind of author identification.

The Journal does not accept articles having more than 3 authors.

The journal does not publish articles of authorship or co-authorship of graduates. If necessary, they will be cited as "collaborators" at the end of the text.

It is fundamental to send the Private Instrument of Authorization and Assignment of Copyright, dated and signed by the author(s). The document must be attached at step 4 of the paper's submission.

The texts will be published in the original language and in English. The quality and costs of the translation will be the sole responsibility of the authors. Translation is mandatory only for texts that are selected for publication.

Authors must comply with an interval of 2 (two) editions for new publication



EVALUATION OF PAPERS

Papers received for publication must be original and will be submitted to the appreciation of the members of the Editorial Board and of ad hoc consultants, who will issue their opinions. The papers will receive two evaluations and, whenever necessary, a third one. The anonymity of authors and reviewers is respected.

The Scientific Editors and the Editorial Committee are in charge of the final selection of the texts that were recommended for publication by the reviewers, taking into account their academic-scientific consistency, clearness, relevance, originality and opportune discussion of the theme.

The texts approved by the referees that were not selected for publication in the issue to which they were submitted will be presented to the editors of the subsequent issues, to be published in the Complementary Texts section.

 

COMMUNICATION WITH AUTHORS

The authors will receive an e-mail with the final decision, and the Journal may not return unpublished originals.



AUTHOR’S RIGHTS

The Journal cannot afford to pay copyright nor distribute copies of individual papers.

The Private Instrument of Authorization and Assignment of Copyright, dated and signed by the author(s), must be sent with the paper.

The content of the text is the authors’ responsibility.



NORMS FOR SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

Papers must have, in that order:

  • title in Portuguese, or in the language in which it was written, and in English;

  • abstract with 120 (one hundred and twenty) words at the most, in Portuguese or in the language in which the paper was written, and another one in English, with indication of 5 (five) keywords in Portuguese or in the language in which the paper was written, and in English;

  • text keyboarded in Word, space 1.5, font Arial size 11; the text must have 20 to 25 pages at the most, including tables, graphs, figures, and bibliographic references; images must be sent in JPG format, with minimum resolution of 300 dpi and maximum width of 13 cm;

  • subtitles, no more than 6 words;

  • bibliographic references following the instructions below rigorously:

Books

AUTHOR or EDITOR (ed.) (year of publication). Title of the book. City of publication, Publishing house.

Example:

CASTELLS, M. (1983). A questão urbana. Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra.

 

Book chapters

CHAPTER'S AUTHOR (year of publication). "Title of the chapter". In: BOOK'S AUTHOR or EDITOR (ed.). Title of the book. City of publication, Publishing house.

Example:

BRANDÃO, M. D. de A. (1981). “O último dia da criação: mercado, propriedade e uso do solo em Salvador”. In: VALLADARES, L. do P. (ed.). Habitação em questão. Rio de Janeiro, Zahar.

 

Papers published in journals

PAPER'S AUTHOR (year of publication). Title of the paper. Title of the journal. City, journal's volume, journal's issue, paper's initial and final page.

Example:

TOURAINE, A. (2006). Na fronteira dos movimentos sociais. Sociedade e Estado. Dossiê movimentos sociais. Brasília, v. 21, n.1, pp. 17-28.

 

Papers presented in scientific events

PAPER'S AUTHOR (year of publication). Title of the paper. In: NAME OF CONGRESS, number, year, place where it was held. Title of the publication. City, Publishing house, initial and final pages.

Example:

SALGADO, M. A. (1996). Políticas sociais na perspectiva da sociedade civil: mecanismos de controle social, monitoramento e execução, parcerias e financiamento. In: SEMINÁRIO INTERNACIONAL ENVELHECIMENTO POPULACIONAL: UMA AGENDA PARA O FINAL DO SÉCULO. Anais. Brasília, MPAS/SAS, pp. 193-207.

 

Theses, dissertations and monographs

AUTHOR (year of publication). Title. Doctoral dissertation or Master's thesis. City, Institution.

Example:

FUJIMOTO, N. (1994). A produção monopolista do espaço urbano e a desconcentração do terciário de gestão na cidade de São Paulo. O caso da avenida Engenheiro Luís Carlos Berrini. Master's thesis. São Paulo, Universidade de São Paulo.

 

Internet texts

AUTHOR (year of publication). Title of the text. Available from. Date of access.

Example:

FERREIRA, J. S. W. (2005). A cidade para poucos: breve história da propriedade urbana no Brasil. Available from: http://www.usp.br/fau/depprojeto/labhab/index.html. Access on: Sep 8 2005.