Emerging platform urbanism in China: reconfigurations of data, citizenship and materialities

Abstract

In this article, we argue for an extension of current debates on smart urbanism in China by focusing on the emergence of urban platforms as a key way in which Chinese cities are developing into digitally-enhanced and governed urban areas. China has undergone multiple rounds of thematic urban development, culminating in a recent policy focus on the smart city and on digitally-enhanced urbanism. We argue that this has now evolved, and outline the rapidly emerging phenomenon of platform urbanism, which we conceptualise as not only confined to the policy sphere, but as stretching across the policy-governance-corporate nexus, the market, and urban consumption practices and broader culture. We do so by focusing on key themes emerging in contemporary platform-based digital urban development in China: a.) the rapidly developing geography of urban platforms; b.) a swiftly expanding mass of data and its implications for state-private sector power geometries; c.) domestic urban policy and practice mobilities, and consequences for the circulation of digital urban platforms between cities and across national boundaries; d.) implications for a reconfiguration of urban citizenship; e.) new configurations of urban materialities in the digital platform era. We conclude with brief reflections on data-led urbanism in contemporary China.