Foregrounding everyday safety in platformized informal service provision

This essay responds to two critical gaps in the literature on the platformization of informal services: first, existing narratives around the intersection of platformization and urban informality (particularly motorcycle taxis) are primarily focused on precarity and labor exploitation, notwithstanding the fact that digital or algorithmic systems play significant roles in shaping trust, transparency, credibility, and safety. Second, existing understandings of safety in urban research are either limited to policing and street security or rather diffuse, appearing across different disciplines, such as public health and disaster risk reduction, rather than being integrated into urban public safety. In response, this essay aims to foreground public safety in our understanding of platformed informal service provision, positing a conceptual approach that highlights the nexus between everyday risk, informality, and governance. To this end, calling for a more holistic and integrative approach to safety in urban research in the wake of rapid socio-technical changes, I argue that a better understanding of how safety is perceived, understood, or promoted alongside platformization is crucial for (equitable) urban governance.