A blueprint for market construction? Spatial data infrastructure(s), interoperability, and the EU Digital Single Market

• Published in: Geoforum Vol. 92; pp. 45 - 57
• Main Author: Alvarez León, Luis F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.06.2018; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Capitalism; Constitution; Consumerism; Data processing; Digital divide; Digital markets; Embeddedness; European Digital Single Market; Geographers; Geographic information; Geographic information science; Information literacy; Infrastructure; INSPIRE; Interoperability; Leading edges; Markets; Metaphor; Negotiations; Single market; Spatial analysis; Spatial data; Spatial Data Infrastructures; Europe; Spatial Data Infrastructures; Geographic information; Digital markets; European Digital Single Market; INSPIRE; Interoperability
• ISSN: 0016-7185; 1872-9398
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.03.013

Geographers have recently turned increased attention to the spatial dimensions of markets. However, digital information markets, positioned at the leading edges of capitalism, remain under-examined from this perspective. Contrary to the aspatiality suggested by metaphors of information networks such as ‘the cloud’, a salient element of these markets is their close linkage with legal regimes bound to territorial jurisdictions. Addressing this linkage through a Polanyian economic geographic approach, the present article examines the recent initiative by the European Commission to build a territorially unified digital market spanning the entire European Union, and its relationship with a previous pan-European project aimed at developing unified standards for geospatial data: INSPIRE, the EU’s spatial data infrastructure. The analysis focuses on interoperability, or the ability of systems to communicate with each other, and centers on the specific mechanisms of legal and technical interoperability in two EU member states: the UK and Germany. These two types of interoperability are considered key factors in the social and institutional embeddedness of markets – and as a consequence, their spatial constitution. Through this examination, the article shows that, while digital information markets ostensibly ‘flatten space’ and allow market actors to overcome geographical barriers, their very constitution is the result of particular sets of policies, institutional features, and political negotiations that require both technical and political agreements to achieve integration across multiple scales of territorial jurisdictions.