Premium
Poverty in Transit: Uber, Taxi Coops, and the Struggle over Philadelphia's Transportation Economy
Author(s) -
Borowiak Craig
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
antipode
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.177
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1467-8330
pISSN - 0066-4812
DOI - 10.1111/anti.12543
Subject(s) - mainstream , alliance , capitalism , poverty , solidarity , outreach , political economy , economy , sociology , political science , economics , economic growth , law , politics
This article examines how ride‐hailing companies like Uber have disrupted not only the mainstream taxi industry but also progressive efforts to remedy that industry's shortcomings. The article focuses on Alliance Taxi Cooperative ( ATC ), a failed taxi worker cooperative in Philadelphia. ATC was deeply committed to economic democracy, living wages, and outreach to underserved communities. Its ambitions were nevertheless thwarted by regulatory obstruction and market disruptions caused by Uber. Drawing on relational poverty theory and literature on solidarity economy and platform capitalism, I suggest that ATC 's story offers more than a cautionary tale about the pitfalls facing small taxi start‐ups. It also illuminates a great deal about the exploitative conditions and discriminatory geographies of the taxi and ride‐hailing industry, the biases of regulatory agencies, and the complicated ways that platform capitalism is refiguring class dynamics.