The value of the urban. The political construction of the urban economy in the platform metropolis

Ugo Rossi
The urban revival of the 2010s, epitomised by the rise of an elite of ‘superstar cities’ but also by the ubiquity of smart-city strategies and technology-based market platforms, has taken form within a capitalist context characterised by a novel phenomenon of monopolistic corporations in the technology sector. An extractivist type of urban economy has emerged in this context. Within urban studies, value extraction and capture are commonly associated with the financialization of the real estate sector. This paper looks at the creation and capture of economic value beyond the finance-real estate complex. It does through a critical interrogation of value creation and capture in what is defined as the ‘platform metropolis’. The platform metropolis is a spatial-economic formation deeply shaped by the advent of digital platforms and the central role they have acquired within contemporary capitalist societies. Referring to qualitative research conducted by the author in three major Italian cities – the food-delivery service in Turin, the state-driven construction of Milan as a super-star city, touristification processes in Naples – this paper shows how these urban economies are political artifacts and how these politico-economic constructions reproduce existing positionalities (central, peripheral, or marginal) in a context of uneven regional development.The paper ultimately argues that the economic value of the urban and the revival of cities as economic entities are not a natural phenomenon, or simply a product of market dynamics, but are a political artifice within today’s platform metropolis.