Public support for collaborative workspaces: Dispersed help to a place-based phenomenon?

Abstract

The paper maps a range of policy initiatives for the support of collaborative workspaces (hereafter CWS) by examining the different ways such spaces have been funded, through what instruments, as well as what are the dominant reasons for receiving public support of any kind in urban and rural areas. Our analysis explores policy intentions as well as the funding tools of specific policy programmes that have supported CWS. This contribution aims to provide a categorization of existing policy initiatives about CWS and wishes to connect such policies with wider creative and urban and regional policy debates regarding the turn towards entrepreneurial forms of work and development in an era of economic uncertainty. The paper traces the evolution of CWS by examining the three overlapping waves of CWS and the specific reasons for their emergence. Then, it turns its focus on existing funding schemes and instruments for CWS, identifying five distinct categories of public support. It concludes by testifying in favour of understanding – and thus, supporting – CWS as place-based and site-specific phenomena. Thus, it calls for a new positioning of CWS into place-based development agendas, whilst taking into consideration the singularity of the place, the multiplicity of the actors and the particular institutional conditions and socio-economic characteristics involved.