Future of Work. Platforms, Regulation, Automatisation

Digital platforms like Uber, Lieferando or Helpling are changing the world of work. Such platforms stand for the digitalisation and flexibilisation of work as well as for a reorganisation of practices and patterns of consumption and reproduction in urban space. The platform economy is subject to ongoing and dynamic processes of change. These include numerous recent legislative initiatives and regulatory attempts at the urban, national and European levels, as well as comprehensive automation processes in various industries. According to the thesis of the project, the platform economy is coming under great pressure as a result of these two processes and is entering a new phase. This raises the question of the future of platform work and possibly even the end of the platform economy as we know it.
Against this background, the project is concerned firstly with the reorientation of platform work against the background of regulation and automation and, secondly, with the diffusion of central logics of digital and flexibilised platform work beyond classic platforms. Thus, the project aims at researching the next phase of platformisation and digital transformation of work in urban space.