”I define the core of the Creative Class to include people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or new creative content. Around the core, the Creative Class also includes a broader group of creative professionals in business and finance, law, health care and related fields.” (Richard Florida, “The Rise of the Creative Class”)

21st century economy is dynamic, knowledge-based and increasingly global. Artistic ventures, creative and intellectual capital are inarguably essential parts of it. Creative economy, of which art, culture, design, entertainment, media and innovation are part of, changes how people live. It is imagination and ingenuity that decide what people want to do, make and buy.

“Adequately nurtured, creativity fuels culture, infuses a human-centered development and constitutes the key ingredient for job creation, innovation and trade while contributing to social inclusion, cultural diversity and environmental sustainability.” United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Creative Economy Report 2010

Across all parts of the world, men and women from a variety of backgrounds are participating in spreading a new movement of creative spaces. The digital and creative economies are growing rapidly and are fueled in part by a stronger network of collaborative, shared working (coworking) spaces, accelerators, incubators and investors.

Initially born out of necessity, they became more than just places to work and are places-to-be (understood as social practice). Coworking spaces gather people who are passionate about new, stimulating concepts and developing new ideas as part of their daily work. Brought together in these hubs, they are fueling the creative economy and shaping the future of the cities. Whatever it is that is being created, be it a physical product or an abstract solution, all is based on sets of values and business models, which are placing meaning at the forefront of the work. Coworking as s a lifestyle is changing the approach to entrepreneurship and creative endeavors. It is where new digital start-ups come into being, where education is re-defined and the nature of jobs and employment changed. They serve as an anchor for communities of motivated and creative individuals and transform the ways in which people work, reinvigorating and re-shaping urban cultural and digital landscapes.

This is clearly just the beginning. The implications of this emerging phenomenon on the cultural, economic, political and social transformation of the cities (and its future directions) has not yet been measured or understood. As cultural and networking events serve to further catalyze the movement, this initial study looks at the data on meetups (Meetup.com) created around the concept of coworking in a selection of european cities. The underlying assumption behind this attempt is that the groups themselves (where the creatives join together to learn, connect, get inspired and initiate new creative ecosystems) can provide us with an approximation to the definition, motivations, and a glimpse into the near future of “work”.

In brief, the motivations behind gathering the data could be outlined as follows:

• compare the number and size of meetup groups across different cities
• compare how meetups members rank their corresponding events
• attempt to find definitions of the coworking phenomenon in different areas in the words of the members of the movement using topics, categories labeling the groups, as well as descriptions provided. This aims to be an approximation to the local and cultural context and an indicator of future directions

Coworking is a universal term and is not translated into respective languages. We fetched the data on groups containing the word coworking in their topic descriptions.

The analysis is an approximation as meetup data on its own is a rough estimator. The analysis aims to build and intuition around the topic

Questions to ask:

• alternatives to meet-up data— in many places its not popular or has local alternatives, which leads to:
• data enrichment: e.g. mapping geo locations of hubs and coworking spaces (this dates global), correlate it with the rise of (e.g. digital) start-ups or ‘freelancers/consultants’
• female participation in coworking: is there gender balance?
• coworking is not the only term that can be used (freelance?):


(Coworking spaces and the blurring of categories from: Bruno Moriset, “Building new places of the creative economy. The rise of coworking spaces.“, 2nd Geography of Innovation International Conference 2014)