The colossal buildings lining the boulevard in Hongdae light up the night sky with neon. But it’s not just the sky that shines. Every street, every alleyway, flashes and bounces with moving lights from all kinds of vehicles. Motorbikes, bicycles, small-wheeled electric bicycles, electric scooters, and electric unicycles bustle around. Each carries a delivery box loaded with crispy fried chicken, Jokbal and Makguksu, Malatang, iced Americano, Earl Grey caramel torte, and more. Blazing through the streets, they look like little rockets, fired by various delivery apps—the term “Rocket Delivery”, as one e-commerce platform promotes, is more than a metaphor.
B Mart ₩3,500.
Reject.
B Mart ₩3,500.
Reject.
XX Sushi ₩3000 + bonus ₩1000.
Accept.
I weave in and out of them—the moving lights, noise, and smells, alternating between the street and the pavement, narrowly avoiding pedestrians while checking Kakao Map and the road simultaneously, until I reach the sushi bar, the pickup point. No one greets me. A plastic bag sits on a shelf near the entrance. I check the slip against the order details shown on the Baemin rider app, pick it up, and head to the delivery point: “Wa, U, San…”. San? San! Ha, how did I not notice this [“San” means mountain] … After a gentle incline, I turn into an alleyway and face a dizzying hill. I get off the bike and begin the climb.
I arrive, place the food at the doorstep, and am about to take a photo when I notice the hallway lights are off. I wave my arms, but the sensor doesn’t respond. I stomp my foot. The lights turn on, and a door next door opens slightly. Maybe the neighbour wanted to check the source of the noise, or he was waiting for a delivery too. Briefly feeling embarrassed, I carry on with taking a photo and submit it in the app and hurry to the lift, hearing the door open behind me and the food package being taken inside. Done.
It’s past nine. I’ve cycled a little over 10 km and climbed 105 m, Strava says … Now it starts to rain. The AI sends me jobs with surcharges and bonuses. I was about to head home, but the numbers are too tempting to resist. My GoPro, meant for fieldwork, has died as the battery ran out. Fine, let’s just make some money then. (Fieldnotes, 2021, November 21)
During the COVID-19 pandemic, food delivery platforms were hailed for playing an infrastructural role by mediating the delivery of food for immobilised populations. In many cities across the globe, these platforms continue to proliferate. Deeply embedded in cities, they are transforming social and economic relations and contributing to efficient urban management through the coordination of movements and spatial interactions. Contracted with food platforms, delivery couriers riding through streets with large food containers have now become a regular sight in many cities across the world, including Seoul, South Korea.
Seoul is often depicted as a city of technological advancement. From grocery shopping to house renting, the city has quickly accommodated digital platforms to make every aspect of urban life smarter. On-demand food delivery platforms are particularly expanding since they fulfil Koreans’ desire for convenience, speed, and a variety of food choices. Customers using these platforms can have anything delivered anywhere—from breakfast sandwiches delivered at home to fried chicken for a picnic by the river. Why would one deviate from work and step out of one’s home or office to get a lunch bag, when it can be delivered to them in response to only a few clicks on a mobile screen? Food delivery platforms seem to enable truly smart urban living. Ordering food on a glossy mobile screen represents a seamless digital experience. Yet the proliferation of food platforms has also brought about material changes to the city—some visible and others less so. The increase in stay-at-home orders has led to the rise of new spaces and infrastructures and the demise of others. Most noticeably, these changes include the throngs of couriers darting through every street of Seoul. These couriers are pervasive and mobile, if somewhat invisible, actors who are making and remaking urban infrastructures. As the above fieldnote extract illustrates, the seemingly chaotic movements of individual couriers are somehow coordinated into a collective endeavour to bring the smart city to life.
While Seoul is transforming into a smart city through the implementation of big initiatives including smart mobility, smart waste and energy, and smart public space, a smart city is also incrementally, and even accidentally, actualised through everyday mobility practices, enabled by the continuous efforts of multiple parties with the platform’s coordination. Baemin, the most used food delivery app in Korea (with a half of the country’s population being regular users), has emerged as critical urban infrastructure. It enables everyday but critical connections, continuously assembling bodily practices, mobile apps, and movements in specific ways to achieve specific modes of circulation. The seamless flow of people, vehicles, and data, promoted by the platform, is one of the emblematic images of the smart city. More than any government-led initiatives, Baemin and its couriers contribute to making the smart city real for many urban dwellers. Baemin’s ongoing infrastructuralisation and its social and spatial consequences demonstrate how everyday smartness materialises in unremarkable places like streets, homes, and restaurants.
Baemin continually puts the city into motion, activating a specific notion of smartness, a seamless, ceaseless mobility. Baemin’s infrastructuralisation then gives rise to a particular kind of a smart city. It’s a ‘smart city in motion’—a mobile and mobilised smart city.
‘The smart city in motion’ (2020–2024) explores how food delivery apps generate infrastructural practices and politics in the production of the smart city in motion. Through a mobile ethnography of the Baemin platform and its workers in Seoul, it dives into how urban space and social interactions change as the platform strives for a ceaselessly, frictionlessly flowing city.