Gastvortrag im Rahmen des Osnabrücker Geographischen Kolloquiums | "Platforms and their Logistical Operations" | Referentin: Prof. Dr. Lizzie Richardson, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Institut für Humangeographie

This talk will examine the relationship between digital platforms and logistics. It will do so by considering how platforms – within and beyond the logistics sector – can be understood as logistical. This means focusing not on specific platform companies per se but rather on the operations of platforms, that is what platforms do. The talk sets out how platforms create spaces of coordination that enable the flexible spatio-temporal arrangement of different actors that frequently are otherwise not held together by a singular fixed organisational structure. To illustrate this, the talk draws on examples of platform operations in urban last-mile delivery activities (of meals and groceries), highlighting in particular the varied forms of enablement and constraint afforded to different actors (including labour) in a given flexible spatial arrangement and the role of algorithms and their data in creating spaces of coordination. Platform operations are therefore shown to choreograph the “right time and the right place”, a core logistical activity and one that extends such “platformisation” beyond a distinctive logistics sector. Analysing these logistical operations of platforms is therefore vital for understanding changes occurring in contemporary economic geographies.