Collaborative spaces in third places: types, impacts and policies

This Special Issue contains nine articles, drawn from an international scholarly community; our authors are located in Australia, Colombia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Poland, and Spain. The articles adopt perspectives from economics, management and regional geography, but also organisational and political sociology and urban planning. They employ multiple theoretical approaches among them: decolonial theory, institutional theory, knowledge boundary theory, spatial organisation theory, socio-ecology, and urban planning. This provides a richness of discussion that we have not witnessed elsewhere in the literature exploring the relevance of third places not only as places of work, but places that can help (re)build, better, stronger societies. The Special Issue thus fills a gap in the literature by exploring (i) the interaction within coworking spaces and their effects on co-workers and the local context, and (ii) the location patterns of third places and/or how they impact urban peripheries and rural areas; (iii) Third Places and collaborative space types beyond those that cater to work practices, and (iv) policy tools for promoting collaborative spaces and their networks.