Disrupting D.C.: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City

by Katie J. Wells, Kafui Attoh, Declan Cullen

Overview

A panoramic account of the urban politics and deep social divisions that gave rise to Uber

The first city to fight back against Uber, Washington, D.C., was also the first city where such resistance was defeated. It was here that the company created a playbook for how to deal with intransigent regulators and to win in the realm of local politics. The city already serves as the nation’s capital. Now, D.C. is also the blueprint for how Uber conquered cities around the world—and explains why so many embraced the company with open arms.

Drawing on interviews with gig workers, policymakers, Uber lobbyists, and community organizers, Disrupting D.C. demonstrates that many share the blame for lowering the nation’s hopes and dreams for what its cities could be. In a sea of broken transit, underemployment, and racial polarization, Uber offered a lifeline. But at what cost?

This is not the story of one company and one city. Instead, Disrupting D.C. offers a 360-degree view of an urban America in crisis. Uber arrived promising a new future for workers, residents, policymakers, and others. Ultimately, Uber’s success and growth was never a sign of urban strength or innovation but a sign of urban weakness and low expectations about what city politics can achieve. Understanding why Uber rose reveals just how far the rest of us have fallen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691249759
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	08/15/2023
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Katie J. Wells is a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University. Kafui Attoh is associate professor of urban studies at the School of Labor and Urban Studies at the City University of New York. Declan Cullen is assistant professor of geography at George Washington University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Wells, Attoh, and Cullen show us how changing relations of state, capital, and labor figure in the specific story of Uber in the District of Columbia. The book’s vivid chapters offer policymakers, labor organizers, and community activists insights into the urgencies and vulnerabilities that characterize contemporary fights for the right to the city.”—Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Abolition Geography: Essays towards Liberation

“This wonderful book traverses the streets of the capital city to offer a nuanced account of how Uber became a ‘commonsense solution’ for addressing public needs intensified by urban austerity while also capitalizing on its ravages. Disrupting D.C. is a vital work of scholarship that adds a needed human scale to the simplistic tech bro demands for the smart city.”—Davarian L. Baldwin, author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities

“In a world in which municipal governments are failing residents, the arrival of companies like Uber has further reduced the already low expectations that people have for their cities. Based on an extensive range of research across a number of domains, Disrupting D.C. offers an essential, comprehensive view of Uber and its impact on city politics in the United States. This book is a major and novel contribution to discussions of digital platforms, gig work, technological futures, democracy, and municipal governance. A must-read.”—Juliet B. Schor, author of After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back

“Thorough and nuanced, Disrupting D.C. is an invaluable case study of how gig platforms have taken advantage of the cracks in American civic life and turned every city into a suburb of Silicon Valley.”—Malcolm Harris, author of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

Editorial Reviews

08/14/2023

Urban studies scholars Wells, Attoh (Rights in Transit), and Cullen take an insightful look at Uber’s impact on Washington, D.C., since its arrival in 2011. Through interviews with policymakers, lobbyists, and Uber drivers, they find that “the rise of Uber expresses a set of lowered expectations” toward government’s ability to improve the public sphere. While Uber touted its ability to reverse long-standing patterns of racism in the D.C. taxi system, it did so by narrowing the conception of racial justice in the public sphere “to the rights of consumers” and ignoring the plight of minority workers it was putting out of business. Similarly, while the ride service claimed it was giving its contracted drivers the freedom to set their own hours and make better wages than they could elsewhere, the authors find that Uber has an extremely high turnover rate and is still losing money even though “drivers bear 90 percent of the expenses.” Meanwhile, policymakers’ fear of being seen as anti-innovation led them to pass laws that favored Uber, allowing a private company to operate at lowered costs. Denied access to Uber’s proprietary data, the authors don’t attempt to use alternate quantitative methods that would have helped them make their case. Still, they convincingly demonstrate that Uber’s growth has caused problems for the city. This accessible account will be of interest to urban policymakers and activists. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Winner of the PROSE Award in Cultural Anthropology and Sociology, Association of American Publishers"

From the Publisher

"[A]n engaging account of a complicated urban issue encompassing labor and expectations of city government in austere times, and detailing how tech companies situate themselves as industry disruptors with unequivocal benefits . . . Disrupting D.C. is engagingly and accessibly written."

Choice