Coworking
Challenges and Opportunities for a Prosperous and Fair New Economy
Coworking could become another form of platform real estate and rent extraction, or it could be shaped as civic infrastructure for a fairer knowledge economy.
What the paper argues
This short policy-reader chapter places coworking inside the city-as-commons frame. It asks whether shared workspaces can support social learning, civic engagement, cooperative ownership, and more democratic forms of urban economic life.
The chapter is intentionally public-facing. It treats coworking as part of a wider contest over the new economy: whether new forms of work become more extractive, or whether they help create shared urban resources and institutions.
Core question: Can coworking become civic infrastructure rather than only platform real estate?
Why it matters
The chapter matters because it preserves the policy and commons-oriented version of the coworking argument. It links workspace design to questions of ownership, governance, community, and the right to reshape the city.
Coworking and the commons
This is the civic-policy side of the coworking programme, connecting the later affective-commons theory to urban commons and platform-economy questions.
Read Affective Commons