How does work work? Entering the age of profitable community
Community is an essential part of the human experience. As inherently social beings, we rely on each other for support, emotionally and physically. Today, we live in increasingly privatized and isolated societies, resulting in concepts such as coworking and coliving becoming all the rage. Attempting to bring the notion of community back into the mainstream consciousness, these co-trends have grown increasingly popular and now beg the question: Are these concepts, originally intended to ease the burden of modern capitalism, quickly becoming commodified and sold back to us in a sort of ‘communal package deal’? And if so, is this challenging the balance between private and public life, both on micro and macro levels, potentially forcing us to feed the beast we are trying to escape from?
Financial crisis, high-unemployment and depressed workers: Time for change
Time may heal all wounds, but the cuts caused by the 2008 financial collapse are still raw. A handful of crooked financial institutions turned the lives of millions upside down. Unemployment rates skyrocketed, homes were lost and futures shattered if only to fill a couple of already bulging pockets. It sounds like the plot of a 1970s dystopian sci-fi novel, but unfortunately — it really happened. Although the crisis was felt globally, the Millennials, those born in the early 1980s to the mid-2000s, have become the poster children of institutionalized greed. The highest-educated generation in history is now also the most underpaid.
At one point there were more than 42 million unemployed persons recorded in OECD countries, and many of these were the aforementioned Millennials who were now entering the job market. With little to no professional prospects but more resources and knowledge available to them thanks to technology, there was a major shift towards a growing freelance workforce. For many of these precarious workers, the rise of coworking was a godsend.
The concept of coworking is not new. During the 19th and 20th centuries, artists and philosophers came together in Vienna’s ornate coffee houses to work, debate, and simply be in the company of others. Around the same time in Italy, workshops offered space for artists but also apprentices to hone their various skill sets through collaboration. Throughout history, there are countless examples of individuals gathering and utilizing public space to enable community. These gatherings proved to be more than for professional development only but also majorly influenced local cultures, urban aesthetics, and opinions.
Today’s coworking movement is cut from the same cloth. Some of the first official spaces to crop up in the mid to late 1990s aimed to provide space for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and anyone else who needed to get out of the house, looking for a place where they could “work together as equals”. Even in its early stages, coworking was always a service that came without expectations, promises, and slogans, such as “do what you love”. Coworking spaces helped support and empower their users, encouraging them to tap into their full potential, whether they loved their work or not. As a result, people were immediately taken by coworking. It caused them to change the way they worked and led them to question the concept of work itself. This passion for coworking did not come only from inside the coworking spaces but also recognized the way that coworking could actively revitalize long-forgotten buildings and neighborhoods. The model showed enormous potential for individuals and greater communities, shining a light on the exclusive nature of contemporary company culture and how we could better live together.
Coworking enters the living room
Increasingly unwilling to sit confined in a cubicle for 8 hours a day, today’s workforce has fully embraced communal and mobile work culture. And the future does not end there — coworking’s popularity has resulted in the creation of new services, such as retreat-centric programs, or “coworkations” for digital nomads traversing the globe with their laptops, startup accelerators, creative think tanks, and the latest trend that is taking off — coliving. Like coworking spaces, coliving also stems from adversity, as the majority of today’s young professionals cannot afford to move out of their parent’s homes, causing them to miss out on the chance to build their own lives, both professionally and personally.
Like coworking, communal living is a major part of our human history. From the boarding houses of 19th century America to the communes of the 1960s and 1970s, each one of these communities served its purpose, allowing people to share resources and relieve financial burdens while also acting as a stepping-stone for immigrants and those coming to the city from rural areas in search of work. Living in communities not only provides basic needs but also changes the way we interact with one another. It makes us more conscious about how we consume. Yet, a sense of togetherness did not, and still does not go hand in hand with Western ideals of success. There was a time limit on living communally, as it was expected of a successful member of society to have a job, own a home, and support a family. To push this standard, conservative rhetoric came down on communal living as hard in the late 19th as it did in the 20th century, shaming those who chose to live together as immoral and abnormal. Living in communities not only provides basic needs but also changes the way we interact with one another. It makes us more conscious about how we consume.
But in 2016, the community is making a comeback, attempting to smash those negative stereotypes once and for all and making living in cities like Manhattan a little more doable. The Old Oak Collective in London is tackling the English capital’s housing crisis, Common is “transforming residential housing” to meet the needs of Millennials, while the coworking giant WeWork is back with WeLive, creating a home sweet home for all those lonely entrepreneurs out there.
Similarly to coworking, coliving seems to have drifted far from its roots, no longer the result of organic communities pushing for alternative lifestyles, but rather an easily marketable product. And like the coworking industry, branded coliving actors will have a hard time actually pushing for systematic change and should be better understood as our future landlords.
Coworking — bought and sold?
Today’s workforce demands to be connected. Workers are increasingly unwilling to take a job simply in order to have a job, and they want the company they work for to be engaged in something meaningful. It did not take long for more traditional enterprises to pick up fast on the fact that they might be losing the popularity contest. As more and more potential hires opted to go freelance and took their jobs to the nearest coworking space, traditional companies knew they had to change. And do it quickly. A neatly packaged marketable community was easily adopted by large companies. Without spending significant time building a community bottom-up, large enterprises recognized that coworking could help them win back the popularity contest. And make money in the process.
Today, corporate coworking has become an official term, and coworking enthusiasts10 question if their hard-earned community is now being used to dress up corporations as socially aware communal spaces without actually adopting the core values needed for genuine change. Asking whether or not coworking has been bought and sold is not to say that these spaces have sold out, but rather asks if the coworking value system, based on human need and growth, has been co-opted for financial gain. Today’s most valuable coworking space, worth a whopping 16 Billion USD, has propelled coworking into the mainstream. The home page of their website gets straight to the point — Create Your Life’s Work. Scroll a little further down and you will find WeWork’s mission statement, brimming with inspirational lingo, from “inspired,” “entrepreneurial,” “authentic” and unavoidably “together,” promising the full shared workspace experience.
While convenient, this ready-made community experience somehow takes serendipity, one of the favorite buzzwords out of the equation. The coworking industry leaders like WeWork most likely would not claim that they are not a business, and everybody understands that money is a key element to survival. Yet, while the availability of coworking spaces on a mass scale has helped today’s professionals grow amongst a more global community, the core values no longer seem to come from within, but rather they feel copied and pasted. Coworking is no longer just a catalyst for change, it is also good for business.
Is all this autonomy making us work more?
Increased mobility is eventually extremely positive, and the rise of coworking and coliving has helped the dream of a more global like-minded community become a reality. More than ever, success is being measured by human connection and collaboration, which could result in more open-minded, socially aware individuals. Thanks to technology, seeking jobs that allow for remote work has also become easier. But at the end of the day, newly found freedoms have come with new baggage, such as unresolved benefits, insecurity and even more working hours.
Companies are not only changing their image to be more appealing to workers — sort of like the way big corporations such as Coca-Cola now champion coworking — but many also quickly realized that if they hired potential employees on a contractual basis, they would be relieved from having to pay for insurance, benefits, and retirement.
Employers could save some serious cash in exchange for a little wiggle room, like flexible working hours and the chance to work from home. Looking back, the co-evolution has not turned out the way we expected it to. It is important to return to the roots of communalism, whether at the workplace or at home, to understand where we are today and what more can be done to ensure we are on the way to a more cooperative world.
Put simply, coworking and coliving are based on values that cannot survive within a system that depends and thrives on consumption based on individual needs, wants, and desires. Still today, standard institutions are largely based on service and profit, not genuine community. Perhaps part of the uphill struggle is to break the stereotypes behind movements like communal living, and by allowing coworking and coliving to be coopted, sharing and connection will become more normalized.
Perhaps we have yet to enter into a period of real change, or it might already be happening. Behind every promise to relieve you of your loneliness and undiscovered dreams isa new movement brewing, and maybe next time around it might be called No-working.
Originally published in print for the European Creative Networks magazine.
