Coworking and new urban chance: Exploring the relationship between collaborative working spaces and their urban context

The currently diffused state of job insecurity as a consequence of the 2008 recession, marks a shift in the way of working and its patterns, producing the growth of open workspaces. The urban phenomenon of collaborative working spaces in the city can be seen as a reaction to the collapse of the employment paradigm re-defining the unpredictable access to stable work as ephemeral and flexible. A burgeoning body of work has examined the emergence and operation of these spaces, but limited research has been
done on the relationships with the wider urban space.

This research aims to contribute to the theoretical knowledge of collaborative working spaces and their relationship with the urban space. In particular, the research aims to explore the urban effects of coworking-spaces, including: impact on the surrounding public space; wider urban revitalization (from an economic and a spatial point of view); community building and relationship between coworking members and the local community; the cognitive aspects generated at the local level, where proximity dynamics can have spillover effects.

A comparative research using mixed-methods approach, combined with creating an interactive documentary (i-Doc), will be conducted in the London Borough of Hackney and the Creative Cluster in the northern area of Milan.

This study is relevant to ESRC objectives, as it aims to analyse the topic through an interdisciplinary perspective, combining urban studies, spatial cognition and human geography with an ethnographic approach and experimenting with i-Docs, an innovative data collection method in the urban studies field.