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

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.)