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In 2016, the City of Toronto legalised the ridehail giant Uber under a particularly Uber‐friendly regulatory regime. Rather than understanding this interim outcome along the lines of now widespread narratives of corporate "disruption", in this article I take up Manuel B. Aalbers' notion of "regulated deregulation" in order to foreground the state's role as a manically prolific facilitator of early Uberisation. Based on ethnographic research in Toronto, I argue that the three longer‐standing state spatial strategies of (1) the common‐sense neoliberal state, (2) the labour‐averse competition state, and (3) the tech‐infatuated smart state were paramount in creating those "on‐the‐ground" conditions—social, legal, spatial, and other—on which Uber has been able to thrive in many cities across the North American continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dualistic spatial demarcations of a (peaceful) here and a (violent) there, near and far, global north and south are constant companions of social research. From the perspective of (political) science their task is to put in order the intricate social dynamics and entangled international spaces of peace and war. Casting complex and contested conflict realities into the frames of hegemonic patterns of interpretation ("north vs. south", "strong state vs. failed state") and visually shifting the causes of conflicts to the "spaces of violence" in the global south, cartographic representations are central to Eurocentric spatial fixations of conflict, peace and violence in political science and beyond. Against the reductionism of common spatial meta-narratives (state container, deterritorialization) our contribution argues for a reflexive use of Eurocentric spatial imaginations in general and maps in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]