ABSTRACT
Throughout this book there have been constant references made to different types of service spaces or, in other words, spaces that have significant concentrations of service industries or occupations. The role of telecommunications and other forms of technology in driving time space compression (Harvey, 1989; Ritzer, 1999b) also forms one of the themes that flow though this volume. The relationship between services and space is complex as it operates on a number of different scales, from the environment of the office or shop to concentrations of service providers in global cities, and is altering as technology evolves and as clients require different or new forms of services. All of this is complicated by developing strategies that are designed to increase the productivity of service delivery by replacing people with machines, by changing the ways in which services are delivered, for example by replacing face-to-face banking with call centres (Chapter 6) and e-banking, or by developing a spatial division of labour to reduce employment costs.
