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

由于2008年经济衰退，目前工作不安全的状况普遍存在，这标志着工作方式及其模式的转变，产生了开放式工作空间的增长。城市中协作工作空间的城市现象可以被视为对就业范式崩溃的反应，重新将不可预测的稳定工作机会重新定义为短暂和灵活的。一个新兴的研究机构对这些空间的出现和运行进行了研究，但对它们与更广泛的城市空间的关系的研究却很有限。本研究旨在促进对协同工作空间及其与城市空间关系的理论知识的了解。特别是，研究旨在探讨合作空间的城市效应，包括：对周围公共空间的影响；更广泛的城市振兴(从经济和空间角度)；社区建设以及合作成员与当地社区之间的关系；在地方层面产生的认知方面，接近动态可以产生溢出效应。使用混合方法的比较研究，结合制作互动纪录片(I-DOC)，将在伦敦哈克尼区和米兰北部的创意集群进行。这项研究与ESRC的目标相关，因为它旨在通过跨学科的视角分析该主题，将城市研究、空间认知和人文地理学与人种学方法相结合，并试验I-DOCS，这是城市研究领域的一种创新的数据收集方法。

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 beendone 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.