Is the COVID‐19 pandemic accelerating the platformization of the urban economy?

• Autor(a) principal: Ferreira, Daniela
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Carmo, Renato Miguel, Vale, Mário
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/51283
• topic: COVID-19; Pandemic; Platformization; Urban economy

This article shows that, while the pandemic lockdown decelerated everyday life, it has also potentiated further acceleration of the platformization of urban economic sectors. We show this through an empirical qualitative study of the restaurant sector in Lisbon, in which we found that: (i) the digitalisation of three management tasks during the COVID-19 lockdown – namely marketing, customer relationship management, and delivery tasks – was the trigger for the acceleration of the platformization of the restaurant sector in Lisbon, and (ii) restaurant firms had different departure points in terms of the use of digital technologies – which are linked to their location within the city –, and these led to different rhythms in the platformization of restaurants. We conclude that, as the lockdown measures led to a deceleration of social and economic activities, they also promoted further acceleration of economic change, especially under the logic of the platform economy. Additionally, we show that firms unable to engage with digital platforms have been trying to mimic online dynamics through the implementation of non-platformized digital processes, which lead us to consider that the effects of the process of platformization extend beyond the platform itself.