Presenting coworking spaces and chrono-urbanism as a policy package for sustainable mobility in post-pandemic Malta

Abstract

This chapter proposes a policy package that includes coworking spaces (CSs) combined with chrono-urbanism – the concept in which people access urban services and amenities mostly by walking or cycling in an urban area within a given time (Moreno et al., 2021) – in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, with a special focus on Malta. Malta is an archipelago comprising three islands: Malta, Gozo, and Comino. Its total land area is 316 km2. The archipelago consists of six districts and 68 local councils. The population density of Malta is one of the highest in the EU (1867 persons/km2) (National Statistics Office, 2019). The population of Malta had grown stable by 2010, but as of 2013, it started to increase with immigrants and expats working mostly in the technological, financial, and building industries, reaching half a million. With respect to mobility in Malta, cars are favoured over alternate forms of transportation, namely due to a car-oriented culture and infrastructure investments that prioritize them. For this chapter, CSs are defined as membership-based workspaces in which diverse groups of entrepreneurs and other non-traditional workers work together in shared, communal spaces (Howell & Bingham, 2019). The concept of CSs in Malta is relatively new, starting around 2015 and based on a bottom-up free-market approach with grassroots initiatives (Capdevila, 2017) from local and foreign entrepreneurs. Accessibility to CSs and their geographic proximity highly influence mobility patterns (Mariotti & Akhavan, 2020). There are two important approaches to choosing the right strategic location for a CS. From an entrepreneurial point of view, the CS needs to be located in a high catchment area to maintain and receive a large number of customers, whereas from a mobility perspective, accessibility to the CS is key. The aim of this chapter is to explore how coworking spaces and chrono-urbanism can be part of a policy package that can be used to encourage sustainable mobility in a car-dependent society, Malta. It adopts a mixed methods approach that includes quantitative analysis from an online questionnaire, analysis of narratives from semi-structured interviews, and reviews and evaluations of mobility-related policies. This chapter proceeds with the background to the case study, Malta, together with literature on how the pandemic has influenced work and what is being done to rebound in the post-pandemic period. This description is followed by the research methods, detailing how the research was conducted. The analysis is divided into three parts: travel behaviour before and during the partial lockdown, narratives from local councils, and policy review and evaluation. The discussion ties the findings in with the existing literature and is followed by the conclusion.