ABSTRACT
It is widely recognized that the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously affected the activities of coworking spaces. To investigate the impact of the pandemic on such activities, this chapter explores and compares the effects of the pandemic observed at independently operated coworking spaces (CSs) located in the metropolitan areas of Central and Eastern European capital cities, namely, Bratislava, Prague, Tallinn, and Warsaw. This study therefore provides the first comprehensive insight on CSs in some Central and Eastern European countries. Collecting a sample of 112 independently run CSs, we built a dataset of virtual and on-site activities by searching their Facebook pages and analyzed it using frequency tables and multidimensional scaling techniques. We conducted in-depth interviews with 18 CSs to understand pandemic-driven changes and adopted a grounded theoretical approach. The results of the social media analysis and interviews highlight spatial and relational disparities with a sharp decrease in in-person events and a lower increase in virtual events.
