How do coworking spaces coagglomerate with service industries? The tale of three European cities

Abstract

In recent times, the emergence of coworking spaces (CSs) has changed not only the way workers cooperate, but also how they carry out their activities. This phenomenon, limited mainly to urban areas, has spread heterogeneously across cities. The paper focuses on the location of CSs in Barcelona, Warsaw and Utrecht, three European cities that differ in terms of the typology of creation of these workspaces. In the three analysed cities, CSs are mainly private initiatives, although in Barcelona they are developed by small entrepreneurs, while in Warsaw they are developed by large multinational CS chains. Using K-density (Kd) functions and density maps, we contribute to the empirical literature by identifying how CSs coagglomerate with the service sectors, how CSs are concentrated in core areas of each city and how these factors differ between cities, taking into account the typology of CSs. We found that the CS location and coagglomeration depend on the spatial structure of the city and its development model; therefore, policymakers should take this into account in order to implement appropriate policy measures to attract CSs