![Sample our Urban Studies journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110826/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Urban-Studies.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
With a rising globalization of the economy and society, the digital transformation, and the economic downturn started in 2008, working is becoming less dependent on distance, location, and time. These are some of the reasons that have fostered the development and diffusion of new working spaces like coworking spaces. The paper aims at exploring the location determinants of coworking spaces, an issue that has been less developed by the literature up to now. By focusing on the 549 coworking spaces located in Italy at the year 2018, the paper investigates the location factors of such workplaces, and the attractiveness of large cities as well as peripheral areas. The results of the descriptive statistics and the econometric analysis (a Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial model is applied) confirm that coworking is mainly an urban phenomenon, since coworking spaces tend to be knowledge-intensive places for creative people. Specifically, the municipalities showing higher innovation and entrepreneurial environment (i.e. major cities) are preferred locations. Besides, it is discussed whether coworking spaces may contribute to fostering the development of peripheral and inner areas in Italy, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic where the share of teleworkers outside metropolitan areas has massively increased.
Acknowledgements
The paper is supported by COST Action CA18214 ‘The geography of New Working Spaces and the impact on the periphery’, which is funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework programme of the European Union (project website: http://www.new-working-spaces.eu/; European Union Website: https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA18214). The data used in this paper is drawn from the research project ‘New working spaces. Promises of innovations, effects on the economic and urban context’, funded by the FARB Programme (2017-2019) at Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano. The research team was composed by: Ilaria Mariotti as principal investigator, and research collaborators (by alphabetic order): Mina Akhavan, Simonetta Armondi, Stefano Di Vita, Fabio Manfredini, Andrea Rolando, Stefano Saloriani, and to the memory of Corinna Morandi.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The Inner Areas are ‘areas at some considerable distance from hubs providing essential services (education, health and mobility), with a wealth of key environmental and cultural resources of many different kinds, which have been subject to anthropization for centuries’ (Barca, Casavola, and Lucatelli Citation2014, 7). In the present paper, the term ‘peripheral areas’ comprises ‘Inner Areas’.
2 For a review of studies discussing the findings of the book by Friedman (Citation2007), see the Special Issue of the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society in 2008, which collects several papers stemming from various disciplines.
3 A ‘third place’ is an informal social meeting place that differs from the two conventional environments of home (first place) and the productive workspace/office (second place) (Oldenburg Citation1989).
4 According to Howkins (Citation2001), the creative economy comprises advertising, architecture, art, crafts, design, fashion, film, music, performing arts, publishing, R&D, software, toys and games, TV and radio, and video games.
5 Due to lack of data for the Municipality of Mappano, in the econometric models there are 7953 observations.
6 To underline the linkage between the empirical part and the literature, in parenthesis we reported the category to which the indicator belongs to.
8 The metropolitan city is an administrative division of Italy, operative since 2015. The metropolitan city, as defined by law, includes a large core/capital city and the smaller surrounding towns that are closely related to it regarding economic activities and essential public services, as well as to cultural relations and to territorial features.
9 In Italy, there are 14 metropolitan cities: Bari, Bologna, Cagliari, Catania, Firenze, Genova, Messina, Milano, Napoli, Palermo, Reggio Calabria, Roma, Torino, Venezia.
11 See in the Appendix.
12 We consider creative industries as defined by Lazzeretti, Boix, and Capone (Citation2008).