Coworking in small town centers

As we already discovered in the first 2018 report, Italian coworking spaces are not limited to big cities anymore. Looking at the total number, more than 1 space in 4 is found to be in a town with less than 50’000 inhabitants and half of them can be found in small towns with less than 20’000 inhabitants.

During the last years, many coworking situations have opened in towns that are not very densely populated or in villages right next to metropolitan areas. In many cases it’s a matter of “brave coworking”, because survival in peripheral and less dynamic situations requires stimulating the demand, i.e. adapting the coworking model to the local reality (sometimes trying too hard?). Many interesting experiments can actually be found in very small villages, like rural coworking, social coworking, spaces managed both by private and public entities, in a sort of mixed management, coworking in labs and professional practices.

In those small villages that are right next to a metropolitan area, residents are also experimenting what could be called Commuting Coworking, which offers the convenience of working near one’s home some days per week, also thanks to the establishing of smart working.