Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
Subscribe to Brandon Donnelly
>4.2K subscribers
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There's a lot of speculation (that's all you can really do) about what our world is going to look like on the other side of this pandemic.
I think it's easy to overreach at a time like this and prognosticate dramatic change -- such as the demise of cities and urbanity as we know it. But while I do believe that there are bound to be changes, I also know that after 9/11 most of us eventually stopped being afraid of flying and of being in tall buildings. We forgot and moved on.
So, what might change?
Scott Galloway argued on his blog today that "things won't change as much as they will accelerate." In other words, this pandemic is simply going to make the future happen faster. And one of those things is going to be a faster shift to online for higher education. It is untenable for education costs to continue increasing at the pace that they have been.
In this recent Intelligencer interview with Chamath Palihapitiya, he puts forward the idea that medical data might start to be used publicly. Meaning that, after this is all done, we might be willing to give up a certain amount of our personal freedom in exchange for knowing whether we're in a restaurant with someone who is shedding a communicable disease.
And finally, Richard Florida recently published this online talk about how cities can bounce back from COVID-19. In it, he argues that, yes, cities will survive and that it could actually reinforce the "winner-take-all urbanism" that we have already been seeing.
This, of course, is really just the start of the conversation.
There's a lot of speculation (that's all you can really do) about what our world is going to look like on the other side of this pandemic.
I think it's easy to overreach at a time like this and prognosticate dramatic change -- such as the demise of cities and urbanity as we know it. But while I do believe that there are bound to be changes, I also know that after 9/11 most of us eventually stopped being afraid of flying and of being in tall buildings. We forgot and moved on.
So, what might change?
Scott Galloway argued on his blog today that "things won't change as much as they will accelerate." In other words, this pandemic is simply going to make the future happen faster. And one of those things is going to be a faster shift to online for higher education. It is untenable for education costs to continue increasing at the pace that they have been.
In this recent Intelligencer interview with Chamath Palihapitiya, he puts forward the idea that medical data might start to be used publicly. Meaning that, after this is all done, we might be willing to give up a certain amount of our personal freedom in exchange for knowing whether we're in a restaurant with someone who is shedding a communicable disease.
And finally, Richard Florida recently published this online talk about how cities can bounce back from COVID-19. In it, he argues that, yes, cities will survive and that it could actually reinforce the "winner-take-all urbanism" that we have already been seeing.
This, of course, is really just the start of the conversation.
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