The spatial fix of platform ruralism in the Greater Bay Area of China

Over the past two decades, rural areas within Chinese coastal megacities have been influenced by the rapid development of e-commerce platforms that capitalize on the social and physical advantages of local rural villages, turning them into clusters of entrepreneurship. These once-rural ensembles have embraced the opportunities offered by digital platforms, shifting their mode of production from agriculture to manufacturing and delivering their products directly to final customers in other parts of the world. Despite the magnitude of a phenomenon currently reshaping vast regions of China, the physical transformation of the rural landscape catalysed by platformization remains underinvestigated. Grounded in the notion of platform ruralism, this interpretive study focuses on the first generation of TaoBao Villages (TBVs) in the Greater Bay Area of China (GBA) and selects three for in-depth investigation, employing a mixed-methods approach. Morphological analysis is coupled with in-depth semi-structured interviews and field observations to provide a nuanced understanding of the ongoing multifaceted spatial materialization of platform capitalism. Findings show that, with the penetration of e-commerce, the rural landscape has undergone overwhelming spatial restructuring at both the village and building scales. The expansion of the industrial landscape, along with an expanded road network, was superimposed without regard for existing topography, historical context, morphological continuities and the inhabitants’ centuries-old agricultural traditions. By unveiling such rural landscape transformations, this article aims to contribute to the current critical debate on the power of platform capitalism to reshape rural areas within rising megalopoles, such as the GBA.