Coworking spaces and mid-sized cities in peripheral contexts: Conceptualising development trajectories

Abstract

Coworking spaces and the creative industries represent a rapidly growing but highly diverse shared economy sector. The paper outlines the types of incremental or radical forms of change developed that lead to industrial–institutional coevolution based on evidence from selected cities in Central and Eastern Europe. The results suggest that CS in peripheral areas are contributing primarily to the path upgrading through local embeddedness of stakeholders. These spaces contribute to refocusing local creative ecosystems by enhancing competitiveness of microclusters. Results suggest that CS in peripheral areas are contributing primarily to the path upgrading through local embeddedness of stakeholders through remote workers and digital nomads These cases underline replicative entrepreneurship, where local stakeholders gather momentum for a subsequent period characterised by new internal structures and services in the urban setting. Considering the form of change, our results emphasise the importance of reproductive agency based on diverse services to digital nomads and remote workers.