How the On-Demand Economy Reshaped Cities (citylab.com) 21
Since 2010, a slew of on-demand companies and technologies have managed to use consumer data to transform the commercial significance of urban living. From a report: Historically, one of the great economic benefits of urban life is having access to jobs, schooling, goods, and services without needing to travel very far. But digital platforms that aggregate consumer demand are making physical density less important. Uber and Airbnb, the killer apps of the 2010s, exemplify this change. Once upon a time, visitors needed to flock to quarters where a city's supply of hotel accommodations and other tourist amenities were physically consolidated, usually downtown. If you needed a ride, you used to call the taxi company directly, or flag down one of the cabs that served that area.
Now we transmit our demands for trips and beds as data from wherever we are, rather than direct interactions that depend on physical nearness. Uber and Airbnb consolidate our requests with those of a sea of other users, set prices, offer us suppliers, and dispatch them to us. The apps are creating their own agglomerations of demand, networks that are held together via digital ligaments instead of actual proximity. Kevin Webb, a transportation data expert, points out that Amazon works the same way, building off the big-box store model that came before it: Instead of physically traveling to an area where you can buy tennis balls, shampoo, and a can of tomato paste at three different but close-together shops, its shopping algorithms mean that it can stash those items on a single warehouse shelf thousands of miles away.
What does this shift mean? On-demand platforms have made certain kinds of goods and services more convenient, affordable, and accessible for customers across the income, age, and race spectrums. New places and things opened up for new markets. But the less-desirable consequences of replacing physical marketplaces with digital bundles of demand have been major. As ride-hailing emerged, the taxi industry in most cities has been gutted; in many others, traffic congestion has spiked and transit ridership has declined. Thanks to online short-term rentals, traditional hotels have seen a declining share of travelers opting for their wares and neighborhood housing shortages have been exacerbated by hosts who rent to Airbnb guests rather than full-time tenants. In some cases, once-residential neighborhoods have been emptied of locals and turned into streets of rentable ghost hotels.
Now we transmit our demands for trips and beds as data from wherever we are, rather than direct interactions that depend on physical nearness. Uber and Airbnb consolidate our requests with those of a sea of other users, set prices, offer us suppliers, and dispatch them to us. The apps are creating their own agglomerations of demand, networks that are held together via digital ligaments instead of actual proximity. Kevin Webb, a transportation data expert, points out that Amazon works the same way, building off the big-box store model that came before it: Instead of physically traveling to an area where you can buy tennis balls, shampoo, and a can of tomato paste at three different but close-together shops, its shopping algorithms mean that it can stash those items on a single warehouse shelf thousands of miles away.
What does this shift mean? On-demand platforms have made certain kinds of goods and services more convenient, affordable, and accessible for customers across the income, age, and race spectrums. New places and things opened up for new markets. But the less-desirable consequences of replacing physical marketplaces with digital bundles of demand have been major. As ride-hailing emerged, the taxi industry in most cities has been gutted; in many others, traffic congestion has spiked and transit ridership has declined. Thanks to online short-term rentals, traditional hotels have seen a declining share of travelers opting for their wares and neighborhood housing shortages have been exacerbated by hosts who rent to Airbnb guests rather than full-time tenants. In some cases, once-residential neighborhoods have been emptied of locals and turned into streets of rentable ghost hotels.
Re: (Score:3)
Not the main reason (Score:1)
Suburbs are now built to prevent cross-traffic, with the result being no buses through winding suburbia. This has 2 effects:
A) It disconnects children, pensioners and the disabled from the rest of the town.
B) All vehicles from a suburb are forced onto the one feeder street.
In addition, some towns under-fund road improvements and new roads, meaning more people are forced onto an unchanging transit infrastructure.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Roads are under funded almost everywhere, specifically to enable trucking. Trucks (real ones, not pickups) do orders of magnitude more damage to pavement than light vehicles do. Cars and pickups cause almost no wear to pavement unless it is already falling apart. Even then they cause very little compared to trucks. If the real cost of trucking were applied via vehicle registration or use fees you would see enthusiasm for rail freight multiply overnight as costs were passed on to consumers buying products sh
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If the real cost of trucking were applied via vehicle registration or use fees you would see enthusiasm for rail freight multiply overnight as costs were passed on to consumers buying products shipped by truck.
If you pay attention to history what will happen is that if the cost of trucking goes up, the railways will raise their rates as well (see rent seeking behavior). The end result, after an adjustment period will be people still prefer to use long-distance trucks.
Rail has other problems such as, it's a natural monopoly, it doesn't go everywhere it's needed, the cost of building out urban railways will create a chokehold on economic development, infrastructure costs are very expensive and increase system fr
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Every single problem with rail you listed is also a problem with roads, only moreso. Most cars can't go anywhere that there isn't a well-developed road for example. But rail can carry enormously larger capacity in the same amount of space as a road, so ultimately it makes more sense in the long run. Also, you don't WANT to go everywhere. It sounds romantic, but in reality people are bunched up for reasons.
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California is great about this shit. We put in a gas tax and then take the revenue and dump it into light rail that only serves a fraction of the populace since most transit is no where near where you end up working or living.
Short answer: it did not, TFA is BS. (Score:5, Interesting)
Long answer: the article is a long list of non-sequiturs, generic "IT can and will change the world" statements and not one specific example of a clear cause-and-effect "reshaping" of a single city by some "on-demand economy" effects.
Actually, the article fails even before that, by not providing a working definition of what this "on-demand economy" is and how is it new or different from the old, presumably "on supply" (or at least not "on-demand") economy so that we can judge if a particular "reshaping" is due to the new thing.
One wonders how all those fields of supply chain optimization, marketing and advertising developed in the olden, pre-on-demand age given the purported not-on-demandness of the "economy" before 2010.
I'll tell you what it means. (Score:1)
So what? (Score:3)
Decimate the taxis...so what? They have been replaced by rise shares.
Housing shortage? Hotel vacancies? So what? Rent out hotel rooms to long term renters who canâ(TM)t find another place to live because theyâ(TM)re displaced by the short-timers.
Al these supposed problems are just opportunities, or easily addressed by introducing those affected to each other.
At the end of the day, all that is really happening is change. And thank god for that, otherwise we would still be living in caves wondering how to make some fire.
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Decimate the taxis...so what?
You can pay for a taxi with cash, not so with Uber. Uber is one of the very last companies who I would ever want to give my personal information to, and yet to use their service I would need to install their spyware and tell them everything about myself.
Another problem: a large part of what made taxies vulnerable to "disruption" was the fact that they are required by law to maintain certain unprofitable practices in many cities, for the sake of providing a means of public transit. They're sort of like ut
Re: So what? (Score:2)
Right...so govt requiring private business to maintain unprofitable business practices is a good thing? Please. As for Uber not taking cash...so walk or take the bus.
Personally, I have never used Uber. I object to their philosophy. But that does not mean I want Uber banned. I simply choose not to use it. You can too!
Re: So what? (Score:2)
As a side note, you do not need to flag a taxi down on the street if you can arrange it by phone.
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so govt requiring private business to maintain unprofitable business practices is a good thing?
That's usually the case, yes. Obviously it can go badly, but regulations are generally put there for a reason. Like any utility: orienting your business around serving the public good is never the most profitable approach, and yet it is still a good thing.
For your side note: the point was that when taxis can be arranged by phone then they are not available to be flagged down in the street. The goal was to ensure that there would still be accessible taxis on the street. I don't know the story behind that,
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For your side note: the point was that when taxis can be arranged by phone then they are not available to be flagged down in the street. The goal was to ensure that there would still be accessible taxis on the street. I don't know the story behind that, I'm a little curious, but I'm sure there is a story there.
I understand your point.
My point was that if you can use the phone, you don't need to flag one down in the street. If you're in the the street, and you want a ride, use your phone and call one (or use the app on the phone, or whatever).
Watch the parking space ratio (Score:2)
The first effect of app-called car rides on the design of cities is going to show up as fewer people parking at the urban places where they shop and do business. Architects in each society have to provide a certain ratio of parking spaces to patrons when they design buildings, which for US cities means losing a large percentage of each city to parked cars (https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/07/parking-has-eaten-american-cities/565715/).
Soon, we will stat seeing more empty parking spaces during norm
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The first effect of app-called car rides on the design of cities is going to show up as fewer people parking at the urban places where they shop and do business. Architects in each society have to provide a certain ratio of parking spaces to patrons when they design buildings, which for US cities means losing a large percentage of each city to parked cars (https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/07/parking-has-eaten-american-cities/565715/).
Soon, we will stat seeing more empty parking spaces during normally busy hours as customers Uber to the places where they once had to forage for parking. Once this becomes noticeable, the pressure to reclaim this lost space for new architectiure will become irresistible.
This kind of abuse of land only makes sense in places like the USA where land isn't valued very much. What they do in other parts of the world where space is more scarce; put the car parking underground. As an added bonus, it means that buildings & public spaces are much closer together so there's shorter distances to travel. You can comfortably walk around/across most European city centres & take a bus, train, or metro if you prefer. Also, in most European cities, driving into city centres just doe
Uber isn't a killer app (Score:1)
It's a loss-making shambles of shit that will soon run out of mugs to pump money into it. Then it will be gone.
It isolates us (Score:2)
two killer apps. (Score:2)
So the two killer apps mentioned in the summary are essentially companies that are helping people break the law. That's nice.