I was both surprised and saddened to learn about the death of Tony Hsieh this weekend. Forty-six years old is far too young.

Though best known as a pioneer of e-commerce (he was previously CEO of Zappos) and for his brilliant/wacky management ideas, Tony was also a city builder, particularly in Las Vegas.

Here's an excerpt from a recent WSJ article:

In Las Vegas, Mr. Hsieh became beloved locally for investing $350 million into revitalizing part of the city’s downtown including real estate, restaurants, retail and a tech startup fund starting in 2012. His vision included the development Container Park, a quirky shopping and entertainment center where retailers operate in converted shipping containers. Visitors are greeted by a giant sculpture of a praying mantis that shoots fire.

But perhaps more importantly, everything I have read this weekend about Tony describes him as a good human being with a great sense of humor and a commitment to "delivering happiness."

Here's another excerpt from the same article:

After Zappos had a rash of late deliveries, he sent an apology note to customers and provided a phone number for use by anyone who suffered “undue hardship.” As for those who were merely annoyed, he said, they were welcome to call Zappos and “ask whoever answers the phone to do something weird and embarrassing, like sing ‘I’m a Little Teacup.’”

Happiness. I can't think of anything better to be delivering to people in the world right now.

Recent job posting data from Indeed has revealed a bit of a paradox. The metro areas where more people are able to work from home -- i.e. tech hubs and finance centers -- have experienced larger job posting declines compared to all other US metros, as well as to tourism destinations such as Las Vegas and Orlando.

We know that the hospitality and tourism sector has been the hardest hit by the current environment. But that doesn't appear to be the biggest driver for overall job losses. In fact, one of the key takeaways is that job losses between February and June 2020 look to be correlated with metro size. That is, the bigger the city, the greater the job losses (% change).

So what's going on?

Well, according to Indeed, it's important to look at the local job mix. In "work-from-home metros" like Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston, there has been a relatively high percentage of people who were able to quickly transition to working from home. This is reflected in the anonymized mobile-device data for these cities. More people at home. Less mobility. And a seemingly stronger adherence to social-distancing protocols.

The problem with this outcome is that it crushes most of the in-person sectors and businesses that relied on this workforce moving about the city -- things like food prep and beauty & wellness. I mean, just think about all of the food businesses that survive off lunches in a CBD. According to Indeed, it is these sorts of local economic connections that have really been driving the declines in job postings and overall payroll employment during lockdown.

Last week was CES in Las Vegas. Some or many of you were probably there. One of the things that was announced at the show was a project by Bjarke Ingels Group for Toyota called the Woven City. Situated at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan, the development sits on a 70 hectare site and will eventually house some 2,000 people.

The objective is for it to act as a living laboratory for a number of new city building initiatives, ranging from autonomy and mobility as a service to multi-generational living and hydrogen-powered infrastructure. Woven City is intended to house not only residents, but also researchers who can test out and learn from these new ideas.

Below is a short video from Dezeen. It's entirely visual. No words. There's also an official website, but not much is up there yet. Hopefully there will be more soon. Construction is set to start next year (2021) and it'll be BIG's first project in Japan.