Can coworking spaces be built bottom-up?

Coworking is moving beyond its childhood years, and, as it’s growing up, it’s facing new challenges. Some questions are sparking, such as: how can coworking spaces retain their users? Is coworking involving the actual amount of users who it is saying to engage? Does the coworking movement affect cities and neighbourhoods? Can coworking spaces be built bottom-up? The paper starts with an analysis of the nature of paradigms of contemporary work, fertile terrain for the creation of coworking spaces, which are analyzed according to their characteristics in terms of people, spaces, goods, and processes. The analysis highlights a series of information that leads us to suggest that, yes, coworking spaces could actually be built bottom-up and that this process would bring great benefits to them, especially from the point of view of the community of people within and around them.