Infrastructuration and spatial governance: Why Google is not just another service provider

Abstract

In an era of platform governance and artificial intelligence, it is important to consider the social and political impacts of technology multinational power. In this piece, Google, as a platform and as an infrastructure, is explored in relation to spatial governance. The term infrastructuration (developed by Paul Edwards) is used to explore how the implementation of urban services is accompanied by the generation of norms, codes, and processes that are deeply political and potentially resistant to change, once embedded. The argument is made that this impact is systemic in the creation of a socio-technical dynamic that could solidify into structural inertia.