Why Face-to-Face Still Matters

Face-to-Face: The Persistent Power of Cities In a Post-Pandemic Era, is about the way that people and firms are adapting to the world of always-on and everywhere digital access, and what that means for cities and regions. Twenty years after The Death of Distance—and in the midst of a pandemic that has led some to question the future of cities—many people still think that we are on track for ‘business anywhere’. The book shows why that's not the case, and provides a structure for thinking about the next twenty years of social and economic upheaval. It shows how the changing fortunes of cities are tied to the ongoing importance of face-to-face contact to our most valuable industries, and thus why the ‘human touch’ will continue to be crucial in the cities of tomorrow. Drawing on interviews with artists and advertisers, bankers and bakers, software devs and property developers, across some forty interviews we home in on what people actually do and why. ‘Contact’, in all its forms, is shown to still matter hugely to companies and individuals, even in a world with high-quality video conferencing and free online calling. And when the pandemic hit, a further digital survey explored interviewees’ experiences of an ‘e-only’ world, gaining ‘front-line’ insights into the short- and long-terms. The book seeks to provide guidance for city leaders, businesses, policymakers and students of urban and regional planning on how to think about 21st Century urban change.