Parasitic platform urbanism in Dhaka and Melbourne

This paper explores the relationship between platform-mediated labour on Uber, Pathao, UberEats and DoorDash, and the public infrastructures of two cities – Dhaka and Melbourne. Due to geographical location and economic difference, the provision of public amenities varies greatly between Dhaka and Melbourne. However, our research shows that there are some similarities in how labour platforms make use of public amenities in each city. In this paper, we argue that digital labour platforms rely on cities’ existing public infrastructures to run their businesses and that this causes various challenges for both gig workers and cities. Our paper contributes to infrastructure studies, platform studies, and labour studies by demonstrating that digital labour platforms operate like parasites. Just as parasites benefit at the expense of the other, or the ‘host’, digital labour platforms rely on cities’ existing public infrastructure without investing to that infrastructure. Following this argument, we conclude that there is a need for platforms to provide more amenities whether they recognise platform workers as ‘employees’ or not.