Placing the platform economy: the emerging, developing and upgrading of Taobao villages as a platform-based place making phenomenon in China

Abstract The actions of platforms and their all-inclusive impact on place development is coined platform-based making in this article. We use the actor-network theory to analyse a typical e-commerce making, namely emergence, upgrading Taobao villages China, explore mechanisms platform power. Our study shows that ‘make’ places by platform–place interactions progressively expanding enrolment intra-regional extra-regional actors. In addition, our research advances its application transcends urban production-side bias economic geography.