A guest article by Sophie Bonnet, analyst at Deskwanted.com, a global portal for coworking spaces.
In North America the number of coworking spaces increased to 342. 315 of them are located in the U.S. and 27 in Canada. This represents a growth of 16 percent between October 2010 and February 2011. Yet as the Global Coworking Survey showed, April and September are the peak months for coworking space openings – so an even greater increase is expected in the year ahead.
In Europe the numbers grew strongly in winter. On the old continent there are now 281 coworking spaces, 19 percent more than last October. Germany showed the highest growth, with the numbers rising by a third to 58 coworking spaces. France is also experiencing above-average increase. In the United Kingdom, London has experienced a boom in recent months, far above the national coworking space opening rate.
The highest increases were registered in Latin America and Australia (including New Zealand) - albeit from a quantitatively low starting level. In the oceanic area there are now 16 coworking spaces, while South America has 27, of which well over half are in Brazil.
Cities with higher populations are the locations of the highest level of growth. Four cities have emerged as global capitals of coworking – Berlin, London, New York and San Francisco. They are currently the only cities in the world with more than 15 coworking spaces.
Then there are several other coworking hub cities with at least five active spaces. In North America, they are Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles and Montreal. In Europe, these hubs have emerged in Hamburg, Madrid, Paris, Prague and Vienna. South America has Sao Paulo and Australia has Melbourne, which also count five or more spaces each.
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Deskwanted is the sister site of Deskmag.
