Via Deterritorial Investigations Unit.
David Harvey talking to Evgeny Morozov, in the first few minutes he addresses the issue of the claims being made about the end of globalisation/neoliberalism. The conversation then quickly ranges over the gig economy and what Guy Standing calls the ‘precariat’ (it’d be interesting to stage that conversation!) and then a brief statement question about ‘smart’ cities (Harvey is dismissive). Worth watching.
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Harvey: municipalities have to cultivate discussion about how to shape and regulate innovations so that they don’t go the way of uber or the way air bnb is going whereby larger capitalist investment and people with funds to buy properties are turning it into just another kind of ‘hotel’ industry and people end up working as ‘slaves’ to the extraction of capital value out of providing accommodation. How to do it ‘outside’ of capitalism though is a challenge. We need alternative but economically viable modified versions of services like this that do actually ‘share’ the benefits of the sharing economy. Further on Harvey has a very compelling critique of the smart city notion : it has to address the social values, realities, challenges of people’s urban existence (aging, social/race inequality, etc before, during and after imagining all kinds of nifty innovations in automation etc. to avoid lapsing into hyped disruption, innovation, and new gadget fetishism.