Digital Geography 3 (2022) 100042 Available online 12 August 2022 2666-3783/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/4.0/). When cities meet platforms: Towards a trans-urban approach Niccol` o Cuppini a , Mattia Frapporti b, * , Maurilio Pirone c a Researcher at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), Piazza dell'Unit` a 11, 40128 Bologna, Italy b Researcher at the University of Bologna, Via Asmara 4, 38060 Isera (Tn), Italy c Researcher at the University of Bologna, Via Murri 61/2, 40137 Bologna, Italy A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Fourth industrial revolution Platform labour Planetary urbanization Platform Economy ABSTRACT This paper focusses on the impact that the development and spreading of digital platforms have at urban level. In particular, lean platforms are transforming cities more and more in sites of production and circulation, so to change also actors and roles engaged with urban planning and public policies. Despite we will propose an investigation on a particular service, neither the analysis of a general process shared by all platforms, in the article we will investigate the socio-historical background for platform economy development more in general, in order to propose a methodological approach we call a trans-urban approach. In the frst part of the article, we rest on the historical background of our digital era. Analysing the relation between technological innovation and productive organization, we will highlight how platform economy emerges as particular articulation of a more general long-time transition deeply entangled with the so-called “Logistics Revolution”. In the second part, we will consider more in depth the specifcities of platform busi- ness model in relation with its urban dimension focusing on the platforms territorialization and on platforms conficts. In the third and fnal part, we propose a trans-urban approach as an innovative perspective to study the globalized and variegated features of contemporary capitalism, in particular the urban impact of platform economy. The aim is to sketch few features of a new methodological approach towards the urban space as feld of tension between several and different perspectives generated by the development of platform economy. This article summarizes some frst outputs from Horizon2020 project PLUS (Platform. Labour in Urban Spaces) coordinated by University of Bologna. 1. Introduction During last years the literature regarding the platformization of la- bour in urban context has been highly expanding (Barns, 2020; Graham, 2020; Huws, 2020). On one side it concentrated on so-called lean plat- forms that provide local services and their impact on labour organiza- tion and regulation at urban level: we are talking about transporting (Rosenblat, 2018; Rosenblat & Stark, 2016), food delivering (Richard- son, 2020 among many others) and hosting (Ferreri & Sanyal, 2018, Shaw, 2018, Gainsforth, 2019, S¨ oderstr¨ om & Mermet, 2020 just to recall a few). On the other side, many scholars analysed dynamics and processes crisscrossing single platforms: the extraction of data (Attoh, Wells, & Cullen, 2019; Mezzadra & Neilson, 2019), resistances (Rav- enelle, 2019; Rossi, 2019; Workers Inquiry Network, 2020), living la- bour behind algorithm management (Anwar & Graham, 2020, Casilli, Chicchi, & Marrone, 2022), a de-westernized gaze on platforms (Chen & Qiu, 2019; Davis & Xiao, 2021; Odendaal, 2020). In this article 1 we will investigate the socio-historical background for platform economy development in order to propose a methodological approach linking urbanization and platformization in the framework of a more general transformation of capitalist processes. Indeed, from an historical perspective we will try to show how platforms and * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: niccolo.cuppini@supsi.ch (N. Cuppini), mattia.frapporti2@unibo.it (M. Frapporti), maurilio.pirone2@unibo.it (M. Pirone). 1 The research reported in this paper was funded by European Union, Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, “Platform Labour in Urban Spaces: Fairness, Welfare, Development” (https://project-plus.eu), Grant Agreement No. 822638.The views and opinions expressed in this publication are the sole re- sponsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily refect the views of the European Commission/Research Executive Agency.In particular, this elaborates materials from the frst two work packages of the project framing the platform economy in sociological and historical terms. Mattia Frapporti edited more the frst paragraph, Maurilio Pirone the second, and Niccol` o Cuppini the third, but the fnal output is the result of a strong cooperation between the authors. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Digital Geography and Society journal homepage: www.sciencedirect.com/journal/digital-geography-and-society https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2022.100042 Received 15 April 2021; Received in revised form 21 June 2022; Accepted 9 August 2022