Research

Working Title: Reasserting Public Authority in the Platform City: A Comparative Analysis of Micromobility Governance

Overview

My DPhil research examines how municipalities in the United States reassert governance authority within platform-mediated micromobility systems — the networks of e-scooters and dockless bikes now embedded in city streets. As mobility platforms increasingly determine how vehicles move through, and data flows out of, public space, cities have begun using regulatory tools — permits, data-sharing mandates, and enforcement powers — to reassert a degree of control over infrastructure that was traditionally theirs to govern.

This project asks a simple but underexplored question: when cities use these tools, does it actually work? The research is at an early stage, and the account below reflects the current shape of the project rather than settled findings.

Research Aim

To evaluate how municipalities reassert governance authority within platform-mediated micromobility systems.

Research Objectives

Who / Why — Measure the extent to which municipalities exercise regulatory and administrative authority over micromobility platforms through data-sharing mandates, and assess whether that authority translates into measurable shifts in governance power.

Where / How — Investigate how micromobility programs are embedded in urban space and mobility systems in ways that can be observed and compared across cities, using data drawn from permitting, geofencing, and mobility data infrastructure.

Primary Research Question

How do municipalities reassert governance authority within platform-mediated micromobility systems in U.S. cities?

Conceptual Framework

The project rests on a foundational distinction between platform power — the operational capacity to shape urban mobility — and municipal authority — the legitimate, institutionally recognised right to govern it. The central puzzle is that platforms often have the former without the latter, while municipalities have the latter without the former.

Three complementary theoretical lenses help unpack how that gap plays out:

• Spatial contestation (the Lefebvrian vector) — attending to how platforms participate in the production of urban space.
• Network power (the Castellsian vector) — treating platforms as “switchers” that control flows of urban information and mobility.
• Infrastructural governance (the platform urbanism vector) — situating the analysis within the broader comparative literature on how platforms and cities co-shape one another.

Methodology (in development)

The research proposes a comparative, data-driven approach across a set of U.S. cities, centred on an index under development — the Municipal Authority Data Index (MADI) — intended to help characterise how municipal authority and platform leverage vary across cities and over time.