Third Places for Work: A Multidisciplinary Review of the Literature on Coworking Spaces and Maker Spaces

Given the growing importance and worldwide diffusion of new workplaces, this chapter presents an interdisciplinary overview on the core topic of this book through an up-to-date literature review of the phenomenon of emerging workplaces, more specifically coworking spaces and makers spaces. In other words, the aim is to provide a comprehensive review of research on coworking spaces and maker spaces as ‘third places’ for work, which are becoming alternative solutions within the context of the digital revolution and the rise of sharing economy. Here, such workplaces are considered at crossroads with different disciplines of business/management, economics, geography, sociology, planning, and other sciences. The review, therefore, covers studies conducted by scholars in varied fields, which are published in journals or presented in conferences, as well as unpublished thesis and working papers within the period 2001–2019. These studies have focused on several aspects of coworking spaces and maker spaces, which can be grouped in the following categories: (i) spatial characteristics (typologies and location factors); (ii) coworkers and socio-economics patterns (proximity features; social interaction and community making; economic performance; well-being); (iii) effects on the urban context in cities of different sizes. Considering the still very young topic of emerging workplaces, this review concludes by building a theoretical foundation, while highlighting the gap in the literature and proposing future research lines.