The State of Uberisation: Neoliberalism, Smart Urbanism, and the Regulated Deregulation of Toronto's Taxi-cum-Ridehail Market

Abstract

In 2016, the City of Toronto legalised the ridehail giant Uber under a particularly Uber-friendly regulatory regime. Rather than understanding this interim outcome along the lines of now widespread narratives of corporate “disruption”, in this article I take up Manuel B. Aalbers’ notion of “regulated deregulation” in order to foreground the state's role as a manically prolific facilitator of early Uberisation. Based on ethnographic research in Toronto, I argue that the three longer-standing state spatial strategies of (1) the common-sense neoliberal state, (2) the labour-averse competition state, and (3) the tech-infatuated smart state were paramount in creating those “on-the-ground” conditions—social, legal, spatial, and other—on which Uber has been able to thrive in many cities across the North American continent.