Urban-digital Layers: From Global Internet Infrastructure to Dark Kitchens

Abstract

In recent decades, the increasing number of digital platforms, such as Uber, iFood, and Airbnb, and their influence on how cities are produced and managed have stimulated debates about the relationship between digital and urban spaces. Given this scenario, this article aims to analyze the development of the Internet as an infrastructure at different scales and historical moments, based on its spatial aspects, to constitute what we call urban-digital layers. We initially present the development process of the Internet as a global and national infrastructure in the 1990s and 2000s. Next, we analyze the presence of iFood dark kitchens in the Glória neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, indicating how the platform spatializes a service infrastructure locally. We extracted data on one hundred establishments from the Ifood website using Python code. Each establishment was searched on Google Street View and classified as a traditional restaurant or a dark kitchen. Of this total, 64% are dark kitchens, generally concentrated in less central and less busy streets. Based on this and other processes, we indicate how platforms have constituted urban-digital layers that complicate the process of city production and management, generating new dynamics and spatial typologies. Finally, we propose an interpretation of the relationship between the digital and the urban in Brazilian cities, based on global trends and the socio-spatial particularities of each location, as an expression of the presence of digital platforms in the Global South.