Coworking spaces as places where economic diversity can be articulated: Towards a theory of syntopia
Résumé
This article reports a qualitative study of several coworking spaces conducted over 3 years. We build on Foucault’s reflection concerning heterotopias to develop a new concept – that of ‘syntopia’ – for theorizing this type of space, whose main characteristic is that its alternative potential lies in enabling its users to articulate economic diversity. Our contribution is twofold on one hand, our theorization of coworking spaces helps better account for their complexity, for the tensions that can arise within them and for their impacts; on the other hand, with the concept of syntopia, we provide a concept that could help identify other places of a post capitalocentric economy, likely to be a source of profound change in our society. We propose to develop a ‘syntopology’ whose object would be to study systematically the different forms of syntopias, their characteristics, potentials and limitations. © The Author(s) 2018.