Vasilis Avdikos

This chapter focuses on the ways the deterritorialisation of labour, as expressed through the expansion of digitally mediated, remote work arrangements is reflected upon collaborative workspaces (CWS), especially through the increasing inflows of digital nomads and lifestyle migrants and the shift of such spaces towards facilitating their needs. Building on the case of the CWS landscape in Athens, Greece, we argue that relevant adaptations can (i) undermine CWS’ capacities and potentialities to constitute alternative and resilient labour arrangements that empower workers and (ii) result in putting pressure in cities in Southern Europe which are already struggling with the implications of overtourism and transnational gentrification. Moreover, we underline the potentialities lying in the alignment of coworking practices with the logics, practices and organisational modes of the cooperativist movement and the landscape of Social and Solidarity Economy towards both ensuring their resilience against pressures of commercialisation and establishing their role in providing a safety net for a not-so-privileged and precarious workforce, through their operation as terrains for emancipatory practices of labour solidarity.

The paper maps a range of policy initiatives for the support of collaborative workspaces (hereafter CWS) by examining the different ways such spaces have been funded, through what instruments, as well as what are the dominant reasons for receiving public support of any kind in urban and rural areas. Our analysis explores policy intentions as well as the funding tools of specific policy programmes that have supported CWS. This contribution aims to provide a categorization of existing policy initiatives about CWS and wishes to connect such policies with wider creative and urban and regional policy debates regarding the turn towards entrepreneurial forms of work and development in an era of economic uncertainty. The paper traces the evolution of CWS by examining the three overlapping waves of CWS and the specific reasons for their emergence. Then, it turns its focus on existing funding schemes and instruments for CWS, identifying five distinct categories of public support. It concludes by testifying in favour of understanding – and thus, supporting – CWS as place-based and site-specific phenomena. Thus, it calls for a new positioning of CWS into place-based development agendas, whilst taking into consideration the singularity of the place, the multiplicity of the actors and the particular institutional conditions and socio-economic characteristics involved.

Οι συνεργατικοί χώροι εργασίας (collaborative workspaces) αναφέρονται στους νέους εναλλακτικούς εργασιακούς χώρους που έχουν αναπτυχθεί την τελευταία δεκαετία, όπως οι χώροι coworking, οι θερμοκοιτίδες και οι επιταχυντές νεοφυών επιχειρήσεων, τα fab labs, hackerspaces, makerspaces, οι κολεκτίβες εργασίας, οι δημιουργικοί κόμβοι κ.λπ. To σημείωμα προσπαθεί να ορίσει το φαινόμενο των συνεργατικών χώρων, να περιγράψει τα χαρακτηριστικά και τις λειτουργίες τους και να αναδείξει τα οφέλη των χρηστών τους καθώς και τις συνέπειες στην επιχειρηματικότητα. Τέλος, το σημείωμα αναδεικνύει μερικές νέες τάσεις στις διαδικασίες ανάπτυξης των συνεργατικών χώρων και προτείνει ορισμένες πολιτικές για την ανάπτυξη των συνεργατικών χώρων στην Ελλάδα, οι οποίοι φαίνεται ότι μπορούν να τονώσουν την επιχειρηματικότητα και να μειώσουν την εργασιακή επισφάλεια, τόσο στα μεγάλα αστικά κέντρα όσο και στις μικρότερες πόλεις.

Αναφορά: Αυδίκος Β. (2020), «Συνεργατικοί χώροι εργασίας: χαρακτηριστικά, τάσεις και προτάσεις πολιτικής»,
Ερευνητικά Κείμενα ΙΜΕ ΓΣΕΒΕΕ 15/2020, Αθήνα: ΙΜΕ ΓΣΕΒΕΕ, σσ. 32

Shared workspaces and hubs for independent workers and start-ups are increasingly becoming a subject of local and regional economic development policies as they are considered crucial intermediaries in facilitating entrepreneurial growth and local innovation agendas. However, so far policy-makers do little to address two transformations in recent shared workspace development: the growing commercialization and diversification of shared workspaces and the spread of coworking beyond big agglomerations towards medium-sized and smaller cities and even rural areas. The paper argues for new policy principles that acknowledge the social values as much as the economic values that shared workspaces generate and promote.

Επερχόμενο στις Γεωγραφίες (2016),
Ένα από τα κύρια χαρακτηριστικά γνωρίσματα των δημιουργικών βιομηχανιών είναι τα υψηλά επίπεδα εργασιακής επισφάλειας, τόσο για τους μισθωτούς εργαζομένους, όσο και για τους ελεύθερους επαγγελματίες. Το άρθρο αναλύει την ανάπτυξη των ευέλικτων και επισφαλών συνθηκών εργασίας στην δημιουργική οικονομία και προβάλει το παράδειγμα των τρίτων τόπων (συνεργατικοί χώροι εργασίας) ως ένα αντίδοτο στις παραπάνω συνθήκες. Μέσα από ανώνυμες προσωπικές συνεντεύξεις εργαζομένων σε τέσσερα συνεργατικά γραφεία αναλύονται οι λόγοι για τους οποίους ελεύθεροι επαγγελματίες στην δημιουργική οικονομία επιλέγουν την εργασία σε συνεργατικά γραφεία, καθώς και τις οικονομίες κλίμακας που αναπτύσσονται εκεί. Επίσης, το άρθρο αναλύει τον τρόπο οργάνωσης των συνεργατικών γραφείων στο εσωτερικό τους και με βάση αυτό προχωρά στον διαχωρισμό των σχέσεων που αναπτύσσονται στα συνεργατικά γραφεία, οι οποίες μπορούν να εκτείνονται από την απλή συστέγαση των συν-εργαζόμενων μέχρι και την κολεκτιβοποίηση του μεγαλύτερου μέρους της εργασίας σε αυτά. Λέξεις κλειδιά: δημιουργική οικονομία, τρίτοι τόποι, κολεκτιβισμός, επισφάλεια

New geographies of creative labour in the period of economic crisis: from collaboration to collectivism Οne of the main features of creative industries is the high levels of job insecurity for both waged labour and self-employed. The paper analyzes the development of flexible and precarious working conditions in the creative economy and shows in what ways the example of third places (coworking spaces) can act as antidote to the precarious conditions. Through personal anonymous interviews with employees in four coworking offices, it analyzes the reasons why freelancers in the creative economy choose to work in coworking offices and in what ways do economies of scale develop in such places. The article also analyzes the everyday organization of coworking offices and on that basis, the paper developes a typology of coworking relations, which can range from the simple co-location and collaboration of co-workers up to the collectivization of most of the work.

Στον ηλεκτρονικό τόμο «Αξιολόγηση των επιδράσεων που έχουν ασκήσει στην πορεία της Ελληνικής οικονομίας οι πολιτικές που χρηματοδοτούνται από τον προϋπολογισμό της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης-Μέρος Πρώτο», ΕΛΙΑΜΕΠ- «Τράπεζα της Ελλάδος», διαθέσιμο στο http://www.eliamep.gr/wp-content/uploads/2012/10

The paper makes an attempt to analyze the processes of creation and commodification of local collective symbolic capital in a previously-much-deprived neighborhood (Kerameikos-Metaxourgeio) in the Athens’ city center in Greece. In doing so, the paper builds on David Harvey’s theoretical analysis on the ways that monopoly rent is generated, by the capitalists, upon the uniqueness of culture, or in other words, upon the collective symbolic capital that marks a city, a place, or a neighborhood. In order to highlight the processes of generation and commodification of collective symbolic capital, the paper uses a typology, as developed by Cohendet et al (2010, 2011, 2014) that demarcates the processes of creativity, and in our case the processes of collective symbolic value creation, into three layers: that of the underground (artists), the middleground (places, events) and the upperground (firms). The relational interaction of these three layers, produces creative externalities that are gradually deposited in the middleground that gives birth to the local collective symbolic capital of a specifican area. This then can be a subject of commodification by the relational elements of the underground and upperground, but in very unequal ways. Moreover, the paper shows that the element of middleground can be regarded as the spatial terrain for struggles and antagonisms between artists of the underground and firms that attempt to create and appropriate the symbolic capital by invading into the middleground. Furthermore, the conceptual and analytical tool that the paper builds, offers a fresh way at exploring further the processes of urban gentrification.

Το άρθρο επιχειρεί μια ανασκόπηση της συνεισφοράς των κοινοτικών ενισχύσεων στον τομέα των βασικών υποδομών (μεταφορές, περιβάλλον, τηλεπικοινωνίες, ενέργεια, υγεία-πρόνοια, πολιτισμός) στην Ελλάδα από το Α ΚΠΣ 1989-1993 (και τα ΜΟΠ 1986-1989) μέχρι και το Γ ΚΠΣ 2000-2006. Σκοπός του άρθρου δεν είναι να αποτιμήσει την πορεία των κοινοτικών ενισχύσεων στις υποδομές με λεπτομέρεια, αλλά να δώσει μια συνολική και συνοπτική εικόνα αυτής. Μετά από μια σύντομη εισαγωγή και κάποιες θεωρητικές παραδοχές, αναλύονται οι στόχοι του προγραμματισμού της κάθε προγραμματικής περιόδου για τις υποδομές στο οριζόντιο επίπεδο των τομεακών τους Επιχειρησιακών Προγραμμάτων (ΕΠ), καθώς και τα αποτελέσματα της υλοποίησής τους. Στο τελευταίο μέρος υπάρχει μια συμπερασματική ανάλυση των προβλημάτων που αντιμετώπισαν οι ενισχύσεις για τις υποδομές, και κυρίως στις μεταφορικές υποδομές, η οποία ανοίγει τον διάλογο για τον εντοπισμό των (πολιτικών) αιτιών, αφού πολλά από τα προβλήματα υφίστανται ακόμη και σήμερα.

The paper explores the ways that a powerful local industry can be regarded as a local ideological hegemonic bloc. The concept of the local hegemonic bloc is deployed in a case study of the Rhodes tourist industry to provide a way of analysing how a specific spatial industrial concentration creates and sustains an ideological atmosphere locally, which supports the industry’s status while simultaneously legitimating exploitative actions.

Parko Navarinou is an occupied open public space located in the center of Athens, Greece. It was occupied in March 2009 by the local residents and it was transformed from a concrete private space to a lively green space which is self-governed by the visitors, while the decisions are taken through the meeting of a weekly committee. However, after the first few months of occupation some problems were risen, as the police was regularly “visiting” the park and also there were problems from the misbehavior of some of the visitors. These facts, along with a violent attack in the park by local hooligans that destroyed many parts of it, have leaded to fewer numbers of those who were regularly visiting the park, most of them anarchists and anti-authoritarians. That processes resulted in the closeness of the political boundaries of the park and put at stake the open and free character of this public space. The paper analyses the politics of the park and discusses what these might mean for the “right to the city”.

""The thesis makes an attempt to explore and theorise the ways that the socio-economic trajectory of a locality evolves, through the Gramscian (1971) concept of “ideological hegemony”. The thesis questions to what extent certain powerful industrial groups can be regarded as local ideological hegemonic blocs, and explores what this might mean for an understanding of the local socio-economic trajectory. Antonio Gramsci’s writings are integrated along with Anthony Giddens’s Structuration Theory (1984) and this integrated theoretical framework constitutes the conceptual platform of the thesis, while the ontological platform is inspired by the relational perspective (Harvey, 2001, 2005, Massey, 2005) that views space as an “existent alterity” and as a medium for action. The conceptual framework developed in the thesis is applied and contextualised through empirical research on the function of the tourism industry in two Greek localities (Rhodes and Preveza), using holistic qualitative methodology.

The analysis shows that the concept of “ideological hegemonic blocs” can provide the field of Uneven Spatial Development with a supplement explanation that unpacks the ways that a local industry affects the spatial atmosphere of the locality, and subsequently the local power geometry. In other words, this concept can unpack the ways that a local industry can efficiently exploit local resources (e.g. natural environment, labour) and how this exploitation can be seen, through an ideological assimilation, as common sense by the local population, thus as a legitimate action. Moreover, it is evident that the Gramscian literature, as applied through the thesis, may help form a new way to look at the inequality of difference of human perceptions and meanings in time-space, and how these meanings reproduce and sustain specific power relations that legitimate one view of reality over others.

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The aim of this paper is to introduce a novel conceptual framework of cultural heritage value that does not merely consider the economic impacts of the heritage and museums sector. But also its effects on the social and cultural fabric of surrounding places and user communities. Such framework is critical for enabling related research to move beyond the economic evaluation of heritage and effectively capture non-consumptive elements that generate positive externalities, such as sense of place, creativity, memory, cultural diversity, tolerance, social capital and community cohesion. As witnessed by the recent proliferation of heritage impact valuation studies in Europe, the chapter addresses a particularly topical issue for cultural theory, policy and practice, which is still often approached monolithically despite calls for its holistic theorisation (Εuropean Commission, 2018). Contrary to previous work, the chapter combines heritage studies with human geography in order to conceptualize the diverse aspects, manifestations and processes involved in interactions with heritage across different levels. In doing so, it positions for the first time, the idea of absolute, relative and relational space to the context of heritage value production (economic and non-economic) with a view to build a framework that can guide future empirical research on the topic.