The Story So Far

Abstract

This introductory chapter sketches the territory to be explored: how ICT is, and is not, changing everything; the continuing importance of face-to-face contact in many sectors; how businesses adapt to this changing and digitally-dominated landscape; and what this all means for cities and towns. It summarises the book’s ‘layered’ structure: starting with the underpinning that infrastructure provides for contact (Chapter 2); explaining how F2F has such an important role to play in making markets and doing deals (Chapters 3 & 4); homing in on the core issue of why firms and workers value face-to-face interaction so highly, and interviewing the people involved about what they actually do day-to-day (Chapters 5 & 6); and finally on to the ‘so what for cities’ conclusions (Chapters 7 & 8). It stresses, too, a view of the coronavirus pandemic as an accelerant to already-existing trends: it may be the petrol, but it is not the fire.