Introduction

Since the early 2000s, coworking spaces—as the archetype of collaborative workspaces—along with other forms of shared spaces (such as makerspaces, FabLabs, creative hubs, business incubators) have proliferated around the world, mainly in big agglomerations such as global cities and metropolitan areas. While in 2018 the number of spaces amounted to 16,599 by 2024, they had risen to 41,975 worldwide (Statista, 2023). On the one hand, the expansion and popularity of collaborative workspaces (hereafter CWS), especially in big agglomerations, can be linked to the turn towards cognitive capitalism intertwined with shifts in the economic structure. On the other hand, CWS stands in relation to the growing importance of globalisation since the late twentieth century and the parallel splintering of value-chains that resulted in more freelance work. Cognitive capitalism has increased the importance of knowledge (and knowledge workers) as an economic resource, because it leads to innovation for value creation (Reckwitz, 2021; Storper, 1997). The shift in the organisational structure of the economy manifests in the change of employment patterns such as new independent, project-based, non-routine work, mainly executed by freelancers and self-employed persons (Boeri et al., 2020; Broeckling, 2007; Pongratz & Voss, 2003; Spreitzer et al., 2017). Within this context, CWS in big cities have risen dramatically since the mid-2000s as they hosted the main actors of the shifts above. Freelancers, start-ups, SMEs and large corporations use CWS as sites where labour is performed, networks are enlarged, and collaborations are evident on various levels. Even though CWS remain to be primarily an urban phenomenon (Table 1), recently we observed the gradual spread of CWS in less densely populated communities in rural and even peripheral regions across the EU that face challenges such as brain drain, low investments level, little entrepreneurship, lower social capital and less high-skilled labour to name a few (Mariotti & Sasso, 2024). Recent studies show that CWS in predominantly intermediary and rural NUTS 3 regions count for about 34% of the total number of CWS in Europe, which can be counted at around 12.000 (Marmo et al., 2025). The contributions in this volume unpack the development processes of CWS in rural, suburban, remote and peripheral areas, their wider economic, social and community impacts at the local and regional level, as well as at the level of the individual worker and the enterprise. The book brings together contributions from a broad range of scientific disciplines, including social and economic geography, economics, business studies, architecture, planning, gender studies, and management studies.