Background and Characterization of Coworking Spaces

Abstract

CWSs are a relatively young phenomenon that has experienced a dynamic development within fifteen years. The first CWSs emerged in the mid-2000s in the urban centers of the USA and Europe as a response to the transformation of the world of work and the associated flexibilization of work and employment. Although similar models were founded in different places, such as Schraubenfabrik in Vienna in 2002 (as a ``community center for entrepreneurs'' (Foertsch and Cagnol 2013)) or St. Oberholz in Berlin in 2005 (as a café with free internet access as a magnet for the digital bohemia (cf. Friebe and Lobo 2007, pp. 150–152)), the founding of the so-called Spiral Muse Coworking Group on August 9, 2005 in San Francisco (Neuberg 2005) marks the birth of coworking in the history of coworking (cf. Foertsch and Cagnol 2013): This ``community office space for writers and programmers'' (Neuberg n.d.), which was initiated by programmer Brad Neuberg, was organized as a regular event on two days a week in a healing center (cf. ibid.). After a year, the project was terminated and replaced by Hat Factory in San Francisco as the first permanent CWS that used the term coworking (Foertsch and Cagnol 2013). In the following years and favored by the global financial and economic crisis from 2007, coworking experienced a rapid spread, initially in the urban metropolises of the global north. In 2007, Citizen Space in Zurich was opened and in 2009 Betahaus in Berlin – both the first CWSs of their country, as indicated by themselves on their websites (Coworking Switzerland n.d.; cf. Foertsch and Cagnol 2013). While there were around 600 CWSs and 21,000 coworkers worldwide in October 2010 (Foertsch 2014a), by the end of 2015 there were already an estimated nearly 8900 CWSs and 545,000 coworkers worldwide (Foertsch 2019). In 2020, coworking became increasingly established with an estimated over 19,400 CWSs worldwide and almost 2 million coworkers (CoworkingResources and Coworker.com 2020).