LinkedIn Show Notes #35 from the Coworking Values Podcast Bullpen.
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Three community builders. Three continents. One pattern: They stopped selling memberships and started building movements that run on relationships, not transactions.
This week from the Coworking Values Podcast Bullpen: We’ve been tracking how coworking spaces can become laboratories for post-capitalist organising.
Not in theoryâin practice. We found three people who’ve built alternative economic models that prove community is currency. Here’s what they built.
The Assignment
Xavier Damman runs Commons Hub Brussels, where members pay in both euros and community tokens earned through care work.
Ashley Proctor has spent 20 years building “communities of care” in Toronto and Vancouver, pioneering models that put member needs before profit maximisation.
Helena Norberg-Hodge founded the global localisation movement after witnessing how the global economy destroyed a thriving culture in Ladakh.
None of them apologises for rejecting the growth-at-all-costs model.
None of them measures success purely in revenue.
Xavier could have stuck with traditional membership fees.
Instead: “Community is immunity. When everything around us is falling apart, what’s going to remain is each other.”
The Injustice We’re Tracking
Here’s what’s broken: The dominant story in coworking says optimise everything for efficiency. Scale or die.
Treat community as a byproduct of good business, not the core product.
Reduce human relationships to customer transactions.
This story hollows out the thing that actually sustains usâthe messy, inconvenient, essential work of caring for each other.
It tells operators they’re failing if they prioritise member wellbeing over profit margins.
It treats social connection as an amenity, not infrastructure.
The market won’t fix this. The state won’t fix this.
People do.
Xavier Damman: The Commons Currency Experiment
Xavier spent 10 years in Silicon Valley building startups.
He knows how the traditional game works.
Then he moved back to Brussels and faced the “meta-crisis”âclimate collapse, institutional failure, his 12-year-old daughter’s future.
His response wasn’t another protest.
It was Commons Hub Brussels.
“I figured, all right, it’s too late for 1.5 degrees. Things are going to be quite interesting. What do we do?”
The answer: build community infrastructure before we need it.
“When everything around us is falling apart, what’s going to remain is each other. That’s why community is immunity.”
Commons Hub runs on two currencies.
Members pay euros because they still need to cover rent.
But they also pay in Commons Hub tokensâearned only by contributing to the community.
Organising events. Watering plants. Cleaning.
Care work that can’t be valued in traditional economics but keeps communities alive.
“We introduced a different currency that we call the Commons Hub token. It’s really about what we call the care economy. It’s a currency that you get only by contributing to the community.”
This isn’t a side project.
It’s a systematic rejection of the monoculture of money.
“We cannot possibly rebuild our communities as long as we’re going to recognise the monoculture of a single currency as our God.”
The space also runs themed community days.
Crypto Wednesdays. AI Mondays. Regen Tuesdays.
Not networking eventsâtribe-building sessions where specific communities know they can find their peers.
“Magic happens at the intersection of different communities. A village of just geeks is not that exciting. A village of just people doing meditation is not exciting neither. But if we can bring people together, we can reach an orchestra.”
The product isn’t the desk.
It’s the experience of collective efficacy.
The feeling that when the next crisis hits, you’re not facing it alone.
Ashley Proctor: From Membership Fees to Collective Ownership
Ashley’s been watching the coworking industry evolve for 20 years.
She’s seen it professionalise, scale, and in many cases, lose its soul.
Her response isn’t nostalgia.
It’s experimentation with ownership models that most operators won’t touch.
“I’m curious about models where sustaining a powerful force doesn’t require exchanging a membership fee,” she explains.
Through her work with Community Land Trusts, Ashley’s discovered something that connects directly to Xavier’s alternative currency experiments: traditional economic models are insufficient for community infrastructure.
CLTs operate on the same principle as Commons Hub Brussels.
The community collectively owns and stewaves a resourceâin this case, land and housingâthat benefits everyone rather than extracting profit for distant shareholders.
“Community Land Trusts are based on very similar principles to coworking movements: collectively addressing an issue and valuing a shared outcome.”
The numbers tell the story.
While private real estate speculation prices out local residents, CLTs lock down affordable housing “for generations to come.”
It’s permanent affordability, not temporary profit.
But Ashley sees the bigger pattern.
“The most interesting area for me at the moment is layering the coworking movement with some of these other movements.”
She’s bridging worlds that rarely talk to each other.
Coworking operators and housing activists. Nonprofit directors and social entrepreneurs.
People who understand that the problems they’re solvingâeconomic precarity, social isolation, community breakdownâhave the same root cause.
“There are scholarship programmes and all kinds of shared space models that don’t operate in the traditional desk or membership model.”
City-sponsored memberships for newcomers.
Corporate partnerships that fund community access.
Revenue models where “the capital they need is volunteerism and philanthropy.”
“What’s the value of 10 coworking communities within your district? What’s the value of making sure that there’s affordable space for them to exist where they need to be to support your residents?”
Ashley’s not asking rhetorical questions.
She’s building systems that answer them.
Proving that when community infrastructure operates as shared wealth rather than extracted profit, everyoneâincluding the operatorsâbenefits.
Helena Norberg-Hodge: The Economics of Connection
Helena’s critique of the global economy isn’t academic.
It’s visceral.
In 1975, she witnessed the collision of two economic systems in Ladakh.
One where “the word for ‘poverty’ didn’t exist.”
Another that taught people to feel poor by showing them what they lacked.
“I found a people who had a standard of living that was materially simple, but who were prouder, more joyful, and had a greater sense of well-being than anyone I’d ever met.”
Then came development. Global markets. Western media.
Competition replaced cooperation. Anxiety replaced joy.
“We’ve been trapped over the last 35 years in a corporate world where governments have signed over their rights to global corporations.”
Helena’s diagnosis connects directly to Xavier’s alternative currency work: the monoculture of money destroys community resilience.
Her prescription is concrete.
“The most promising changes I see around the world have to do with rebuilding local food economies.”
Not because food is just food.
Because food is the only thing everyone needs every day.
When you shorten the distance between producer and consumer, you turn transactions into relationships.
“Here in Devon, they’ve been able to establish a new mill so that the wheat from the farm right here is being put into bread in the nearby bakery.”
This is economic infrastructure that serves people instead of extracting from them.
The same principle Xavier applies with Commons Hub tokens.
Helena’s warning to coworking operators is urgent:
“We are being driven by an army of algorithms that thrives on polarisation, hatred, division.”
Spaces that operate as isolated bubblesâbeautiful interiors disconnected from local economiesâbecome part of the problem.
They’re optimising for individual convenience while the social fabric deteriorates around them.
But spaces that integrate with local food systems, support community initiatives, and create opportunities for mutual aid become civic infrastructure.
“The capital they need is volunteerism and philanthropy.”
Helena advocates for what Ashley calls “communities of care” and Xavier calls “the care economy.”
Different words for the same insight: real wealth is relational, not financial.
“I would watch out for very ambitious schemes like blockchain and some idea of building trust with people you’ve never met.”
The solution isn’t more technology.
It’s rebuilding connection at human scale.
Using existing currencies while creating space for the informal economy of care and cooperation that actually sustains communities.
The Pattern: Infrastructure for Energy They Said Has No Value
- Xavier’s alternative currency system.
- Ashley’s communities of care.
- Helena’s local food networks.
None of these optimise for scale.
They optimise for depth.
They’re building economic infrastructure for the thing that sustains us: relationships, care work, local resilience.
The invisible currencies that keep communities alive.
This is Jon Alexander‘s shift from Consumer to Citizen, documented in real time.
The Consumer story says: optimise for convenience, monetise relationships, treat community as a marketing channel.
The Citizen story says: prioritise connection over convenience, build infrastructure for collective resilience, and create spaces where people shape their world instead of just choosing from options that someone else has created.
Xavier could have built a traditional coworking space.
Ashley could have focused on profit maximisation.
Helena could have stayed in academia.
Instead, they’re all building infrastructure for the thing the market can’t capture: the social fabric that holds us together when everything else falls apart.
Your coworking space is already this infrastructure.
The Sunday morning community that gathers around shared values.
The informal networks where freelancers support each other through tough times.
The conversations where local problems get identified and solutions get born.
The question isn’t whether to do this work.
The question is whether you’re naming it.
Who This Is For
If you run a space under 150 members and you’ve been told you’re failing because you haven’t scaled, this is for you.
If you’ve been pressured to treat community as a nice-to-have instead of your core product, this is for you.
If you’re tired of optimising for metrics that don’t capture what actually matters in your space, this is for you.
If you’ve wondered whether there’s a way to build sustainable businesses without extracting maximum value from every interaction, this is for you.
The corporate coworking story says: chase enterprise clients, maximise revenue per square foot, scale through franchise models, exit when the numbers look right.
That story has its place.
But it’s not your story.
Your story is Xavier’s: building alternative economies that value care work alongside paid work.
Your story is Ashley’s: creating communities where people solve problems collectively instead of competing individually.
Your story is Helena’s: using local spaces as laboratories for post-extraction economics.
You don’t need 100,000 square feet to do this work.
You don’t need VC funding to build community infrastructure.
You don’t need to optimise for growth that comes at the expense of the people you’re meant to serve.
Start with what you have.
Use existing currencies while building alternative value systems.
Create space for people to contribute through care, not just cash.
You’re not failing.
You’re building civic infrastructure that operates on a different logic than the extraction economy.
If that’s you, you’re not alone.
And you don’t need permission to keep building.
We’re documenting next from the Bullpen
Unreasonable Connection Going Live! Lands in London in February 2026.
We’re gathering 150 coworking community builders for a day of citizenship-focused conversation, perfectly timed with Workspace Design Show London on February 25th-26th.
This isn’t a conference delivered to you.
It’s an event we’re building with you.
Join the co-creation list and help shape what happens.
Because involvement creates commitment.
Do The Work
1ď¸âŁ Join Marko Orel, Helga Moreno, and Jeannine van der Linden on November 27th online as they discuss the development of coworking support for Ukraine since the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. RSVP here
2ď¸âŁ Today, we published our Coworking Values Podcast,with Helga Moreno talking about her daily life in Ukraine in between missile attacks and power cuts, and the moment in February 2022 when she and her family decided to stay.
3ď¸âŁ Join this monthâs Unreasonable Connection call and explore Shamenaâs question about how far you can go before youâre overextended. RSVP here.
4ď¸âŁ Read Rosee Shrestha‘s LinkedIn newsletter Building a Community That Outlives the Workspace with examples from workish.berlin, Indy Hall, Cat Johnson, Toolbox Coworking and Creative Works Space in E17 – Read it here.
5ď¸âŁ Read The Companies That Market Community Don’t Have It here on LinkedIn.
Connect with today’s guests:
- Xavier Damman on LinkedIn | Commons Hub Brussels
- Ashley Proctor on LinkedIn | Creative Blueprint | Coworking Canada
- Helena Norberg-Hodge on LinkedIn | Local Futures
â Coworking Trends Survey 2025
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