Aside from community (which is incredible important), Hackerspaces are a method of tool-sharing. In the last decade, many of the popular tools that used to live exclusively at a Hackerspace can be now be found in schools, libraries, and homes: 3D Printers, lasercutters, electronics toolkits, etc. And 3 years of pandemic isolation meant that people weren't able to show up anyway.

One of my favorite spaces (though distant from where I live) - Metrix Create:Space - shut down down in 2018 in part because people didn't have as much of a reason to show up [1]

[1] https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2018/08/tech-junkies-and-...