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Whether you live in North Dakota or Texas, there's a reasonable chance that when you travel internationally, you enjoy going to Cancun. Or perhaps you fly into Cancun and then go to a neighboring town like Tulum. United Airlines just released the following map showing the most-booked international destinations from every state for passengers traveling on United Airlines between January and October 2025. The top three destinations are London, Cancun, and Tokyo:
First, it's important to keep in mind that this data only includes people flying on United; it doesn't capture all international air travel. Second, maps like this are necessarily going to be influenced by an airline's biggest hubs. In the case of United, its hub-and-spoke model relies on major airports and routes like San Francisco-Tokyo and Newark-Heathrow.
Still, specific destinations appear on this map for a reason. Cancun is the number one "vacation" airport for Americans, which is an incredible success story, because it wasn't a place until the 1970s. Prior to Cancun, Acapulco was Mexico's top resort destination, but it was becoming constrained, and the government needed a replacement conduit for extracting US dollars from the American middle class. So, they developed Cancun.
The popularity of Tokyo is likely partly a result of a weaker yen, in addition to being an important Asian hub and an incredible place to visit. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), over 2.7 million Americans visited the country in 2024 — a 33% year-over-year increase and a 58% increase compared to 2019.
The country also saw 3.7 million international visitors in January 2025, which is the highest ever for a single month. Countries like the US and Canada also set all-time records for January arrivals. Part of this, I'm sure, has to do with Japan's legendary "Japow." I was part of this year's cohort, and I've never seen so much snow as I did on the island of Hokkaido.
There are also very specific one-off relationships that appear on United's map. The number one destination for the state of Arizona is, for example, Taipei. And this is being driven by a semiconductor boom, specifically Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's direct investment in the state. At the time, it was heralded as "the largest foreign direct investment in a greenfield project in American history."
So, there's a lot that can be gleaned from a map like this. If we were to zoom out and look at all international air travel, we would likely see some reordering. I suspect Paris would jump ahead of airports like Vancouver, given its hub status for other airlines. But it's unlikely you'd see a completely different list. Americans fly east to London, south to Cancun, west to Tokyo, and north to Toronto. These are the primary hub airports.
It's fun to examine projects that I could never underwrite or build in Toronto. Here's another one from Tokyo — a 10-storey, single-stair apartment building on a busy street, next to a metro station.
In yesterday's post about bottom-up urban development, I mentioned (in parentheses) that the focus on regenerating local economies is arguably even more important in the context of Japan, where a shrinking population is creating urban decline in many communities. And the reason I said this is because it is widely known that Japan has a demographic problem.
Since 2009, the country has seen its population decline every single year. Currently, it is hovering at just over 120 million people, but by 2050, it is expected to fall to roughly 100 million (or lower), with people aged 65+ accounting for nearly 40% of the population.
When this is your backdrop, you're usually more concerned about urban decline than you are about building enough new housing. As Fred Wilson mentioned in this recent post, "pressing issues like the unaffordability of housing, for example, can quickly change if we are living in a shrinking world, not a growing world."
Of course, it's not just Japan. The global fertility rate (as of 2024) stands at around 2.25 live births per woman. This is not that much higher than the replacement level of 2.1, and it's being largely propped up by only one region: Sub-Saharan Africa (>4 births per woman). Remove this region, and the world is now already shrinking in population.
This will have dramatic consequences not just on our cities and real estate markets, but on the global economy as a whole, which is why some people, like venture capitalists, are already betting that the world will need to move from labor-bound to energy-bound. What this means is that we're going to need a lot more energy-consuming tech to compensate for the fact that we have less of the other stuff.
Whether you live in North Dakota or Texas, there's a reasonable chance that when you travel internationally, you enjoy going to Cancun. Or perhaps you fly into Cancun and then go to a neighboring town like Tulum. United Airlines just released the following map showing the most-booked international destinations from every state for passengers traveling on United Airlines between January and October 2025. The top three destinations are London, Cancun, and Tokyo:
First, it's important to keep in mind that this data only includes people flying on United; it doesn't capture all international air travel. Second, maps like this are necessarily going to be influenced by an airline's biggest hubs. In the case of United, its hub-and-spoke model relies on major airports and routes like San Francisco-Tokyo and Newark-Heathrow.
Still, specific destinations appear on this map for a reason. Cancun is the number one "vacation" airport for Americans, which is an incredible success story, because it wasn't a place until the 1970s. Prior to Cancun, Acapulco was Mexico's top resort destination, but it was becoming constrained, and the government needed a replacement conduit for extracting US dollars from the American middle class. So, they developed Cancun.
The popularity of Tokyo is likely partly a result of a weaker yen, in addition to being an important Asian hub and an incredible place to visit. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), over 2.7 million Americans visited the country in 2024 — a 33% year-over-year increase and a 58% increase compared to 2019.
The country also saw 3.7 million international visitors in January 2025, which is the highest ever for a single month. Countries like the US and Canada also set all-time records for January arrivals. Part of this, I'm sure, has to do with Japan's legendary "Japow." I was part of this year's cohort, and I've never seen so much snow as I did on the island of Hokkaido.
There are also very specific one-off relationships that appear on United's map. The number one destination for the state of Arizona is, for example, Taipei. And this is being driven by a semiconductor boom, specifically Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's direct investment in the state. At the time, it was heralded as "the largest foreign direct investment in a greenfield project in American history."
So, there's a lot that can be gleaned from a map like this. If we were to zoom out and look at all international air travel, we would likely see some reordering. I suspect Paris would jump ahead of airports like Vancouver, given its hub status for other airlines. But it's unlikely you'd see a completely different list. Americans fly east to London, south to Cancun, west to Tokyo, and north to Toronto. These are the primary hub airports.
It's fun to examine projects that I could never underwrite or build in Toronto. Here's another one from Tokyo — a 10-storey, single-stair apartment building on a busy street, next to a metro station.
In yesterday's post about bottom-up urban development, I mentioned (in parentheses) that the focus on regenerating local economies is arguably even more important in the context of Japan, where a shrinking population is creating urban decline in many communities. And the reason I said this is because it is widely known that Japan has a demographic problem.
Since 2009, the country has seen its population decline every single year. Currently, it is hovering at just over 120 million people, but by 2050, it is expected to fall to roughly 100 million (or lower), with people aged 65+ accounting for nearly 40% of the population.
When this is your backdrop, you're usually more concerned about urban decline than you are about building enough new housing. As Fred Wilson mentioned in this recent post, "pressing issues like the unaffordability of housing, for example, can quickly change if we are living in a shrinking world, not a growing world."
Of course, it's not just Japan. The global fertility rate (as of 2024) stands at around 2.25 live births per woman. This is not that much higher than the replacement level of 2.1, and it's being largely propped up by only one region: Sub-Saharan Africa (>4 births per woman). Remove this region, and the world is now already shrinking in population.
This will have dramatic consequences not just on our cities and real estate markets, but on the global economy as a whole, which is why some people, like venture capitalists, are already betting that the world will need to move from labor-bound to energy-bound. What this means is that we're going to need a lot more energy-consuming tech to compensate for the fact that we have less of the other stuff.
The site itself is only 59.49 m2 (~640 ft2), and the building footprint is 47.97 m2 (~516 sf), for a total of 388.28 m2 (~4,179 ft2). There's retail on the first and second floors, one home per floor on levels 3 through 8, and then a two-storey home on levels 9 and 10. All of this is serviced by a single elevator, and a single open-air egress stair off the back.
The building itself uses a simple structural system involving 6 columns (which you can see evenly placed on the plans). According to the architect's notes, they started with a simple 4-column design, but apparently the columns were too large and compromised the suite layouts.
Tokyo is a unique city and this kind of housing wouldn't work everywhere. But there's a universal lesson here: removing barriers and allowing small infill projects is a good thing for cities. Until these projects are feasible, we won't know exactly what the market actually wants and could support.
Photos from Hiroyuki Ito Architects
The site itself is only 59.49 m2 (~640 ft2), and the building footprint is 47.97 m2 (~516 sf), for a total of 388.28 m2 (~4,179 ft2). There's retail on the first and second floors, one home per floor on levels 3 through 8, and then a two-storey home on levels 9 and 10. All of this is serviced by a single elevator, and a single open-air egress stair off the back.
The building itself uses a simple structural system involving 6 columns (which you can see evenly placed on the plans). According to the architect's notes, they started with a simple 4-column design, but apparently the columns were too large and compromised the suite layouts.
Tokyo is a unique city and this kind of housing wouldn't work everywhere. But there's a universal lesson here: removing barriers and allowing small infill projects is a good thing for cities. Until these projects are feasible, we won't know exactly what the market actually wants and could support.
Photos from Hiroyuki Ito Architects
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