Space-time mapping of co-working spaces in Cairo: shifting paradigms from openness to technologically controlled spaces

Abstract

The paper demonstrates how co-working spaces, with their openness ideologies that are not only manifested in sharing space, but also sharing knowledge and generating access to nonhierarchical productive opportunities, are being subsumed into reinforcing neoliberal exclusiveness. The paper questions the openness of co-working spaces that reconciled with the dominant ideologies of 2011 Cairo, setting the stage to the mushrooming of co-working spaces inside Cairo’s apartment buildings as zones of relative freedom. Through space-time mapping of the emergence of co-working spaces in Cairo, in addition to interviews with co-workers, co-founders, and managers of co-working spaces, the spatial appropriation and accessibility of co-working spaces are demonstrated. Using content analysis and space syntax analysis, the study differentiates between two paradigmatic shifts in the spatial appropriation of co-working spaces—from democratizing digital infrastructure in the aftermath of 2011, to being subsumed by technological capitalist ventures by the end of 2015 into a closed paradigm, they originally emerged to defy—and compares between the spatial accessibility, visual accessibility, and social diversity of the two waves of co-working spaces. Using Cairo’s co-working spaces as a case study, this paper shows how ideologies of openness “neutral” as they may seem, can serve to legitimize exclusiveness, emphasizing how ideas—as men—can be socially located, and serve to legitimize a particular social situation.

Location Patterns and Drivers of Coworking Spaces in European Regions

“…A region's accessibility plays a crucial role in attracting potential coworking space users (Stam and van de Vrande 2017; Avdikos and Merkel 2020). In our paper, instead of proximity to metro stations, which is typically used in studies at the urban scale level (Mourad et al 2021;Tiwari 2022), we decided to include the presence of the largest airport as a proxy for the international and national transport accessibility that drives the emergence of newcomers and consequently coworking spaces to the area. Since isolated areas suffer from their remoteness, a dummy variable for island regions was introduced.…”

“…Most coworking space studies regard access to human capital (iii) as a key factor. For example, they identify proximity to universities and research centres (Mariotti et al 2017;Mourad et al 2021;Sutriadi and Fachryza 2021) as a main factor behind the spatial concentration of coworking spaces. Coworking spaces are centres of knowledge exchange (Bürgin et al 2021) and they enable knowledge exchange for creative workers.…”

“…2018, 2023; Mourad et al . 2021; Sutriadi and Fachryza 2021) as a main factor behind the spatial concentration of coworking spaces. Coworking spaces are centres of knowledge exchange (Bürgin et al .…”