Special session 11:
Post-Platforms Urbanism and Methodological Redesign

Post-platforms refer to digital platforms whose algorithmic models are increasingly driven by automation, real-time data processing, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI). 

As digital platforms have embedded themselves into urban contexts, they have played interchangeable roles—disruptive, urban infrastructural, financial/non-financial speculative. Building on these roles, as digital platforms transition from established, user-driven models to increasingly automated and autonomous systems, a key question arises: how can we methodologically engage with these transformations? How can we decode these evolving systems, trace the footprints of their algorithms, and examine the socio-materiality of their logic within urban spaces? Furthermore, how do emerging data sources, computational methods, and collaborative research frameworks facilitate or constrain our ability to make sense of post-platform urbanism?

This session aims to explore how different methodologies can uncover the ways in which post-platforms are reshaping geographical arrangements, and it invites scholars to critically engage with these new methodological challenges. We particularly encourage contributions that explore methodological innovation across diverse urban contexts, especially those where platformized infrastructures intersect with pre-existing informal, state-led, or alternative urban systems. The hope of this panel is to create a space for rethinking methodologies alongside situated research tactics, enabling digital geographers to move beyond AI anxiety and the reactive ‘catching-up’ mode.