The growth of shared, flexible urban workspaces for startups and SMEs (small and medium enterprises) is now a striking, and very visible feature of British cities. Over the past decade or so, startups and small firms in retail, manufacturing, arts, the cultural industries and the digital economy have been making creative use and re-use of urban spaces – through newish practices such as co-working and pop-ups, as well as reconfiguring older forms such as high street units and industrial estates. We can see these new practices across the city – in centres and in peripheries, in economically vibrant neighbourhoods and more deprived places. Since 2007, for example, there’s been a particular explosion of co-working, incubator and accelerator provision in London: in 2014 there were at least 132 spaces, 50 per cent of which had arrived since 2012. Today there are at least 156 co-working spaces alone
