Technocratic Urban Development: Large Digital Corporations as Power Brokers of the Digital Age

Large digital corporations (LDCs) are forging their central position in cities by asserting themselves as the sole providers of so-called essential urban infrastructures, i.e. new technologies. Barnes (2020) has argued that platform services provided by LDCs are the millennial equivalent to the railway infrastructures that transformed patterns of transport and communications at the end of the 19th century. That is, platform services are increasingly integral to the functioning of cities today, and one ought to thus consider the arrival of “platform urbanism” (2020). In this paper, we reflect on another time period of dramatic infrastructural change in North American and European cities, and highlight the similarity between patterns of urban development at that time and those we see today unfolding under the leadership of LDCs. Rather than focussing on the technological products themselves, however, we reflect instead on the similarities in behaviour and styles of urban governance. We recall the American “tech giants” of the early to mid-20th century in the north-eastern United States and how they pushed for a certain spatial development, which for some represented the height of state-of-the-art innovation and modernity at the time. Robert Moses was one such “giant” (Caro, 1975), “tycoon” (Ahearn, 2010, p. 137), “despotic city planner” (Wainwright, 2017), and “tempestuous, arrogant and very effective bureaucrat,” (Gutman, 2008 p. 534) who – among other things, such as the neglect of NYC neighbourhoods, (Ahearn, 2010) – is widely accredited with the modernization of New York City and State during the first half of the 20th century. Moses is remembered for both the mass construction of toll roads and highway infrastructure; that is, building his “cult of the automobile” (2010, p. 145). He was also known for his formidable talent in strong-arming urban and regional development to suit his objectives (Ahearn, 2010; Caro, 1975; Kaufman 1975). In this contribution, we reflect on how Amazon or Alphabet Inc., armed with significant financial power (Fernandez et al., 2020), are similarly able to bully the field of urban development to suit their own interests, even if they are not civil servants working for the state, as Moses was. We reflect on the cases of Alphabet Inc.’s proposed project in Toronto, and Amazon’s search for a second headquarters (HQ2) in New York City (NYC), and argue that both LDCs drove a style of urban development that depended on brokering power. In this entry, we reflect on this parallel followed by some of the lessons to be learned.