Agglomeration and coagglomeration of co-working spaces and creative industries in the city

Abstract

The present paper investigates the location patterns and the effects co-working spaces (CWS) generate on the urban context. The focus is on Barcelona, one of the most important creative hubs in Europe in terms of knowledge-based, creative, digital, and sharing economy, and the city hosting the largest number of co-working spaces in Spain. The paper addresses three main questions: (1) Which are the location patterns of co-working spaces in Barcelona? (2) Do CWS agglomerate in the same areas? And, (3) Do CWS coagglomerate with the creative industries (CIs)? To do that, this paper uses open data on Barcelona neighbourhoods' socioeconomic composition provided by the Statistics Department of the Council of Barcelona and micro-geographic data of private CWS and creative labs in Barcelona. By using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Kd functions of agglomeration and coagglomeration, results show that CWS are highly concentrated in central areas of Barcelona where there are greater chances to meet customers and suppliers, the proximity to urban amenities and the fact of being associated to a specific place-image. Moreover, they coagglomerate with CIs firms, especially with symbolic and synthetic knowledge-based CIs. These results are relevant when assessing the actual goal of urban policies in Barcelona.

Coworking spaces and creative communities: making resilient coworking spaces through knowledge sharing and collective learning

“…We assume developing local creative ecosystems reflects the need for sustainable development that requires balanced and harmonized cultural diversity, environmental responsibility, and economic viability in CWS. Creative ecosystems could achieve these objectives through the effects they generate on communities in the urban context, specifically in the CCI agglomeration and city image (Coll-Martínez & Méndez-Ortega, 2020).…”

Understanding the shared working spaces: a Geography of Co-working supply in Delhi

“…Only a few studies till date have explored the geography of co-working spaces in global cities, including Manhattan-New York (Zhou, 2019 ), Barcelona (Coll-Martínez & Méndez-Ortega, 2020 ), and Milan (Mariotti et al, 2017 ) among others. A pertinent study has modelled co-working spaces through Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) using parameters, neighbourhood social atmosphere (population density, age, race, household income, education level), neighbourhood environment (medium house rent, proximity to park) transportation connection (subway stations, bus stops) Discovery and events (place of interest, theatres, museums), Life convenience (grocery, restaurants, coffee shops, fitness centres, drinking places), and Promoters of innovations (University and research institutions and creative enterprises),and co-working spaces as dependent variable (Zhou, 2019 ).…”

“…An empirical study of coworking spaces in Beijing (Huang et al, 2020 ) reported that these spaces are typically agglomerated near the concentration of creative and knowledge enterprises in high-density mixed-use areas, bank upon underutilised commercial spaces. Another study in Barcelona (Coll-Martínez & Méndez-Ortega, 2020 ) detected 4 key features of coworking spaces as follows: The density of coworking spaces is higher in the central areas of the city where the probability of meeting with clients and vendors is much greater. Coworking spaces are in proximity to urban amenities.…”

What Do We Know about Co-Working Spaces? Trends and Challenges Ahead

“…On the other hand, sharing border with "basic and transversal themes", there is the orange cluster Urban geographers and urbanists (grey circle) have also paid attention to CWSs. Studies in this area have a strong focus on regional policy and the role of CWSs in shaping urban development and regional growth (e.g., governance, geographies, public sector, urban) [53][54][55]. These investigations are somewhat connected with those in the green circle (sustainable cities), as there is a small overlap between these two clusters.…”