Hotels are an important city-building tool. Let me give you an example. Each year, Conde Nast Traveler publishes a list of the best places to visit right now. Here's the 2025 list. If you scroll through it, one of the 25 places you'll find is Marseille. And if you look at the first picture, you'll find a hotel/restaurant called Tuba Club.

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I'm a big fan of Marseille and that, back in 2021, Neat B and I stayed at this hotel. In fact, the whole reason we even decided to stop in the city for the first time was so that we could check out this exact place. It opened the summer before and I had seen it written up somewhere.

I can also tell you that if you flip through Monocle's new handbook about France and go to the hotel section, you will likewise find Tuba Club. The place is seemingly everywhere and now has a loyal following.

But here's the important thing: it only has 5 rooms! And the room we stayed in was best accessed via a window and a large rock outcropping beside it. There's no way this place would meet code anywhere in Canada. But boy was it cool. And because we loved the experience so much, we decided to go back to Marseille the following summer and check out more of the city. It didn't disappoint.

Now I tell people and write blog posts about how much I love Marseille. And it all started with 5 non-code-compliant rooms perched on a bunch of rocks in a sleepy fishing port on the south end of the city. A great hotel can help you build your city.

We've spoken about Vitalik Buterin before.

He is the inventor of the Ethereum blockchain, and its most prominent figure. He also happens to have grown up in Toronto. He went to the University of Waterloo. So when I wrote this post back in 2021, I asked: Why the hell is nobody talking about this? Why are we not celebrating the fact that our great city helped birth one of the most important technologies of our time? You couldn't ask for a better economic development story. Well, I guess the answer is twofold. Crypto isn't mainstream. Even back in 2021 when things were frothy it wasn't. And, we're awful at promoting and driving a global brand for our city. Both of these things need to change. So if you're interested in learning more about Vitalik and Ethereum, you should check out this new movie (trailer) called Vitalik: An Ethereum Story. To watch it, go to ethereumfilm.xyz and mint the NFT for $20. You'll then be able to stream it. I haven't done this yet, but I'll be doing it very soon. All of the proceeds from the NFT sales will go toward getting a more mainstream distribution deal.

So by watching, you're helping.

Update: I watched it. It’s great.

Last year, I wrote about how Salt Lake City wants to build a new linear park around its downtown. That post can be found, here.

Fast forward to today, and the city's Department of Economic Development has just published a new comprehensive 215-page study that supports turning Main Street into a pedestrian promenade.

Specifically, the area running from South Temple to 400 South, and including 100 South from Main to West Temple:

As part of the study, they highlight a number of successful case studies from around the world, including 16th Street Mall in Denver, Bourke Street Mall in Melbourne, and Queens Quay here in Toronto.

In the case of Denver, they cite the one-mile stretch as single-handedly generating over 40% of the city's total downtown tax revenue! And in the case of Toronto, they refer to Queens Quay as a global destination. (Toronto readers, do you agree?)

Like most city building initiatives, this vision is will take years to realize. But it's interesting to note that, of the eight design alternatives included in the study, there is already one clear preference within the local community -- option B.

Option B is a pedestrian/transit mall, but with multi-use trails. In other words, it is a no-cars-allowed alternative that would still allow bicycles and scooters. Here's the street section:

If you'd like to download a copy of the full Main Street Pedestrian Promenade Study, click here.