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

Abstract

This paper shows that, while the pandemic lockdown decelerated everyday life, it has also potentiated further acceleration of the platformisation 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 platformisation 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 platformisation 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-platformised digital processes, which leads us to consider that the effects of the process of platformisation extend beyond the platform itself.