23 research outputs found

    EXPO 2015 as a Laboratory for Neoliberalization. Great Exhibitions, Urban Value Dispossession and New Labor Relations

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    Great Exhibitions provide analytical lenses whereby capitalist development can be read from material as well as intangible perspectives. Thus, the paper approaches Milan EXPO 2015 through the grid of intelligibility provided by the concept of neoliberalism/neoliberalization, namely as a regulatory experi-ment. EXPO 2015 is first situated against the background of a growing body of literature which interprets mega-events as catalysts of territorial dispossession. Starting from the critical urban theory premise that neoliberalization is necessarily a spatial project, the features of urban space production set in motion by the World Fair are analyzed by paying particular attention to the ways in which social movements framed such transformations and eventually mobilized in reaction to them. Secondly, EXPO 2015 functioned as a laboratory for the implementation of unprecedented labor relations. In particular, the widespread re-course to voluntary or unpaid workforces is in connection with the shift from wage to human capital as the pillar of social mediation between productive subject

    Towards ‘bogus employment?’ The contradictory outcomes of ride-hailing regulation in Berlin, Lisbon and Paris

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    The issue of employment classification has been central in the politics around the platform economy. Crucial has been the phenomenon of ‘bogus self-employment’, whereby workers in de facto dependent employment relationships conduct services as independent contractors. Legislators around the world have aimed to tackle this issue by obliging platforms to classify their workers as employees. Based on empirical research in the ride-hailing industry of Berlin, Paris and Lisbon, where such classification exists already, we highlight its contradictory outcomes. We argue that platform companies have managed to introduce forms of ‘bogus employment’ whereby even formally employed workers lack basic worker rights

    Towards ‘bogus employment?’ The contradictory outcomes of ride-hailing regulation in Berlin, Lisbon and Paris

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    The issue of employment classification has been central in the politics around the platform economy. Crucial has been the phenomenon of ‘bogus self-employment’, whereby workers in de facto dependent employment relationships conduct services as independent contractors. Legislators around the world have aimed to tackle this issue by obliging platforms to classify their workers as employees. Based on empirical research in the ride-hailing industry of Berlin, Paris and Lisbon, where such classification exists already, we highlight its contradictory outcomes. We argue that platform companies have managed to introduce forms of ‘bogus employment’ whereby even formally employed workers lack basic worker rights.Peer Reviewe

    EXPO 2015 as a Laboratory for Neoliberalization. Great Exhibitions, Urban Value Dispossession and New Labor Relations

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    Great Exhibitions provide analytical lenses whereby capitalist development can be read from material as well as intangible perspectives. Thus, the paper approaches Milan EXPO 2015 through the grid of intelligibility provided by the concept of neoliberalism/neoliberalization, namely as a regulatory experi-ment. EXPO 2015 is first situated against the background of a growing body of literature which interprets mega-events as catalysts of territorial dispossession. Starting from the critical urban theory premise that neoliberalization is necessarily a spatial project, the features of urban space production set in motion by the World Fair are analyzed by paying particular attention to the ways in which social movements framed such transformations and eventually mobilized in reaction to them. Secondly, EXPO 2015 functioned as a laboratory for the implementation of unprecedented labor relations. In particular, the widespread re-course to voluntary or unpaid workforces is in connection with the shift from wage to human capital as the pillar of social mediation between productive subject

    Participatory Production of Urban Space. Urban participatory democracy and social production of space in the case of the European participatory budgeting.

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    Tese de Doutoramento em Democracia no Século XXI, apresentada à Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra.At a time when European institutions of representative democracy are in crisis and struggle to maintain trust and legitimacy, European cities have been the stage for experiments of democratic innovations and participatory processes where inhabitants are involved by public authorities in decision making processes regarding the production of urban space. The widespread diffusion of information and communication technologies enabled new opportunities of interaction between participants, lowered the costs and finally fostered the multiplication and diffusion of those experiments, also thanks to the introduction of collaborative platforms designed specifically to support these processes. At the same time, the cross fertilization between participatory methods and digital technologies introduced new challenges that seriously threaten the democratization objectives attributed to democratic innovation practices. This thesis aims to research the technological conditions to which democratic innovations can become a driver for a substantial renovation of urban democracy, which is intended as the combination of two fundamental rights: the right to participate and take part to urban public sphere and the right to contribute to knowledge production regarding space uses and transformations. Consistently, this research focuses i) on the analysis of the technological variables that could influence the selection of participants and the inclusion of weak social groups in decision making process regarding the production of urban space, and ii) on the technological choices that condition the generation and management of bottom-up spatial knowledge, and the elaboration of alternative proposals and opinions regarding urban transformation. Overall the research project is divided in three parts. The first part focuses on the definition of a theoretical framework that melts the normative dimension of critical urban theory with the empirical approach of critical theories of technology, in order to interpret the relation between the technological choices underlying urban democratic innovations and their outcomes in terms of inclusiveness and capability to mobilize bottom up and non-hegemonic spatial knowledge. The second part tests the research hypothesis and applies theoretical analytical tools to observe and research the case study of the participatory budgeting process held in 2018 in the city of Milan (Italy). Participatory budgeting is a participatory process where inhabitants are involved in decisions regarding public expenditures and the transformation of public spaces of the city. Widely diffused, highly digitized, with a relatively long tradition and with a significant literature, participatory budgeting is used as a model of urban democratic innovation to be tested through field research, mixing quantitative and qualitative methods. Finally, the findings of the case study are discussed against the initial research hypothesis and used to propose an innovative interpretative framework of the key technological variables capable to enable effective innovation of urban democracy. VAbstract (PT)Em uma época em que as instituições europeias de democracia representativa estão em crise e lutam para manter a confiança e a legitimidade, muitas cidades no continentetêm sido es-paço paraexperimentos de inovaçãodemocrática e processos participativos, nos quais os ha-bitantes são envolvidos pelas autoridades públicas nos processos de tomada de decisão em relação ao espaço urbano. A ampladifusão das tecnologias da informação e comunicação per-mitiu novas oportunidades de interação entre os participantes, reduziucustos e, por fim, pro-moveu a multiplicação e a difusão desses experimentos, também por meio da introdução de plataformas colaborativas desenhadasespecificamente para apoiar taisprocessos. Ao mesmo tempo, a interação entre métodos participativos e tecnologias digitais introduziu novos desa-fios que ameaçam seriamente os objetivos de democratização atribuídos às práticas de inova-ção democrática.Esta tese tem o objetivo de investigaras condições tecnológicas pelas quais as inovações de-mocráticas podem tornar-seum motor de renovação substancialda democracia urbana, que é percebida como a combinação dedois direitos fundamentais: o direito de tomar parte na esfera pública urbana e o direito de contribuir para a produção de conhecimentossobre usos e transformações do espaço. Dessa forma, esta investigaçãoaborda i) a análise das variáveis tecnológicas que podem influenciar a seleção de participantes e a inclusão de grupos sociais vulneráveisno processos de tomada de decisão à nível urbano; e ii) as escolhas tecnológicas que condicionam a geração e a gestão do conhecimento espacial nas inovações democráticas e a elaboração de propostas e opiniões alternativas em relação à transformação urbana.A investigaçãoestá divididaem três partes.A primeira parte se concentra na definição de um quadro teórico que mesclaa dimensão nor-mativa da teoria urbana crítica com a abordagem empírica das teorias críticas da tecnologia, a fim de interpretar a relação entre as escolhas tecnológicas subjacentes às inovações democrá-ticas urbanas e seus resultados em termos de inclusão e de capacidade de mobilizar conheci-mentos espaciais construídosde baixo para cima. VIA segunda parte testa a hipótese da investigaçãoe aplica ferramentas analíticas teóricas para observar e analisaro estudo de caso do processo de orçamento participativo realizado em 2018 na cidade de Milão (Itália). O orçamento participativo é um processo participativo no qual os habitantes estão envolvidos nas decisões sobre gastos públicos e na transformação dos espaços públicos da cidade. Amplamente difundido, altamente digitalizado, com uma tradição relativamente longa e com uma literatura significativa, o orçamento participativo é usado como modelo de inovação democrática urbana a ser testada por meio de pesquisa de campo, combinando métodos quantitativos e qualitativos.Finalmente, as conclusões do estudo de caso são confrontadas com a hipótese inicial da inves-tigação e utilizadas para propor um arcabouço interpretativo inovador em torno das principais variáveis tecnológicas capazes de possibilitar a inovação efetiva da democracia urban

    Urban participatory spaces. Participatory budgeting as a driver for the enforcement of the right to the city

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    EMPATIA - Enabling Multichannel PArticipation Through ICT Adaptations (687920)During the last decades, the debate around the reinterpretation of the concept of the right to the city (Lefebvre 1967) emphasized the necessity to rethink the notion of urban citizenship in an inclusive perspective in the processes of decision making that influence the production of space (Purcell 2002; Marcuse 2009). In this picture, Participatory Budgeting (PB) represented an important case of study due to its declared objective to give voice to inhabitants that are commonly excluded in local representative institutions (UN-Habitat 2004; Wampler 2012). Nonetheless critical literature highlighted the existence of visible and invisible barriers to participation, able to condition the inclusive capacity of the new urban participatory sphere created by PB. The integration of ICTs in PB management increased the complexity of the relation between these two kind of spaces (participatory space vs urban space)

    PLUS.WP3 Urban governance models for the platform economy

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    The dataset aims to framing the different policies of governance of platform economy at urban level. It includes data related to at least 7 case studies of urban governance of platform economy, one for each of the 7 cities involved in PLUS project (Berlin, Bologna, Barcelona, Lisbon, London, Paris, Tallin). The dataset is composed exclusively from secondary and non-personal data and includes: • open data released on institutional websites of the municipal authorities involved in each case study; • open data released on institutional websites of the other institutions and actors involved in each case study; • Eurostat and OECD open data from online databases; • open data indexes related to the measurement of digital and social innovation, developed by international organizations and available in online databases, such as the EGOV Benchmark, European Digital Social Innovation Index (EDSII) and the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC); • data from existing scientific articles and grey literature (e.g. reports from other research projects

    Hybrid participatory budgeting: the challenges of a multi-channel participation

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    EMPATIA - Enabling Multichannel PArticipation Through ICT Adaptations (687920
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