Our Cost Action 18214 started investigating the effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic by interviewing managers, policymakers, experts and coworkers worldwide. Webinars are run via Facebook.
The seventh live webinar will be on the 24th of June at 4 pm. MC member Irene Manzini Ceinar will moderate the webinar “Working in post-COVID times: may local coworking be the future trend?” with Marc Navarro (coworking strategist, Barcelona), Polly Robbins (Outlandish Coworking, London), Alberto Cossu (Leicester University, London) and Emannuel Costa (Santa Catarina State University, Brazil) as guests.
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the way of working, the habits and lifestyle of every citizen worldwide and will have effects in the medium-long run. All sectors of the economy had to respect «social distancing» to minimise the chances of transmission of the virus, which has been followed by an increased fear regarding physical proximity, especially in the work environment (Molla, 2020).
Specifically, during the past months, we have witnessed a wave of workers that moved from traditional work in the office to work at home through smart or remote working, especially in the case of service and creative and innovative sectors, to which most of the coworkers of the coworking spaces belong (Mariotti, Di Matteo, 2020).
The general fear of physical proximity is also extended to the use of public transport to reach urban areas for working purposes – in Italy before COVID-19, 36.44% of the national population commuted every day (ISTAT, May 2020) for working and school purposes (around 33 million people), while with the beginning of Phase II, only 10% of workers (approximately 300 thousand people) are using public transport, according to initial estimates (Il Sole 24 Ore , 2020).
It is discussed whether local or ‘community-led’ (Avdikos & Merkel, 2019), coworking spaces may be the key for companies to relocate their workers to peripheral areas nearby their homes based on decreasing commuting trends in urban areas. Besides, future trends for the coworking business model and its location dynamics are put forward with policy implications.
Within this framework, the proposed webinar aims to explore the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on coworking spaces by analysing recent trends during the post- COVID-19 and exploring future trajectories for coworking members, managers and the local community.
THE RECORDING OF THE INTERVIEWS IS AVAILABLE AT
https://www.facebook.com/COSTActionCA18214NeW.Sp/videos/315472706283183
