Cities like Copenhagen, Zurich and many others have, of course, long been pioneers when it comes getting people into natural waterways. But this summer we notably saw the fruits of Paris' €1.6 billion investment to clean up the Seine ahead of the Olympic Games. And so very quickly, it is becoming clear that this is becoming one of the hallmarks of the world's most livable cities. How clean is your water and do you enable your citizens to easily swim in it?

It's for this reason that earlier in the summer I wrote a post titled "Toronto needs a summer bathing culture." It was not to suggest that nobody swims in our bodies of water — lots of people do — it was to argue that there's more we could be doing. Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion, to give just one example, feels like a century-old abandoned relic sitting on prime beachfront.

Some of you seemed to take offence to this post, suggesting that I should maybe get out and swim in some of our outdoor pools, like the one at Sunnyside. And I can assure you that I have. I'm a regular swimmer in the public pools of Toronto. But that is not what this urban swimming renaissance is about: "Contrary to popular belief, or simply a fair assumption, a lido does not a swimmable city make."

What this is about is free, easy access to natural bodies of water. And what makes this livability feature so meaningful is that it's both an urban amenity and clear evidence that a city has their shit together (pun intended). It means the city has high standards for water quality and that it manages its sewage in a way that doesn't pollute its waterways.

Summer isn't over yet, so if you live in a place where this is possible, go for a swim. And if you'd like to become more involved in this movement, check out The Swimmable Cities alliance. Launched on the eve of the Paris Olympics, it is now a global community dedicated to transforming our urban waterways. There is also the option for organizations to become signatories. Globizen has just applied to be one, and maybe you'd like to do the same.

Photo: Helsinki by Kuvio

I spent the past week listening to this Bankless podcast with Vitalik Buterin (the Canadian programmer and co-founder of Ethereum). It took me a week because I was listening to it off and on while I was in the car, headed to and from One Delisle and other meetings. But it's a fascinating episode. I think Vitalik is easily one of the most important minds of our generation.

But let me be honest and say that I wasn't able to follow everything in the podcast. I clearly still have a lot to learn when it comes to cryptography. For this reason, I'm not going to recommend that you all watch/listen to the episode — not unless you're prepared to go in deep. This is also supposed to be a blog for city builders (at least most of the time).

But I did want to share one takeaway that I found interesting.

In the episode, Vitalik describes Ethereum as the world's ledger. This maybe won't mean very much if you're not familiar with crypto, but the goal is a universal, permissionless, and censorship-resistant place for recording and securing basically everything: property title records, financial assets, AI-generated cat videos, and so on. Put another way, Ethereum wants to become a foundational layer of trust for the world.

Then, later in the episode, they somehow get onto the topic of dictators. There was a general acknowledgment that dictatorships do have their benefits, but that they also have obvious downfalls. Ideally, we would have a best-of-both-worlds scenario. We want the efficiencies of dictatorships, with all of the benefits of capitalist democracies.

Vitalik refers to this scenario as "dictators in a box," and he argues that we already have them: they're called entrepreneurs. When you start a company, you get to run within your box, and that is the power of entrepreneurship. But importantly, these boxes exist within a broader framework that includes the rule of law, property rights, freedom of speech, and all the other benefits of capitalist democracies.

This is how Ethereum sees itself — as a foundation on top of which "dictators in a box" can build new ideas, businesses, and opportunities. And because of this layering, it will be Ethereum that provides the backstop against people doing bad things, like stealing someone's crypto or falsely claiming that they hold title to a property when they don't.

I found this analogy fascinating, and I think it offers a glimpse of what's at stake if/when Ethereum becomes what it's aiming to become — the world's ledger.

Cities like Copenhagen, Zurich and many others have, of course, long been pioneers when it comes getting people into natural waterways. But this summer we notably saw the fruits of Paris' €1.6 billion investment to clean up the Seine ahead of the Olympic Games. And so very quickly, it is becoming clear that this is becoming one of the hallmarks of the world's most livable cities. How clean is your water and do you enable your citizens to easily swim in it?

It's for this reason that earlier in the summer I wrote a post titled "Toronto needs a summer bathing culture." It was not to suggest that nobody swims in our bodies of water — lots of people do — it was to argue that there's more we could be doing. Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion, to give just one example, feels like a century-old abandoned relic sitting on prime beachfront.

Some of you seemed to take offence to this post, suggesting that I should maybe get out and swim in some of our outdoor pools, like the one at Sunnyside. And I can assure you that I have. I'm a regular swimmer in the public pools of Toronto. But that is not what this urban swimming renaissance is about: "Contrary to popular belief, or simply a fair assumption, a lido does not a swimmable city make."

What this is about is free, easy access to natural bodies of water. And what makes this livability feature so meaningful is that it's both an urban amenity and clear evidence that a city has their shit together (pun intended). It means the city has high standards for water quality and that it manages its sewage in a way that doesn't pollute its waterways.

Summer isn't over yet, so if you live in a place where this is possible, go for a swim. And if you'd like to become more involved in this movement, check out The Swimmable Cities alliance. Launched on the eve of the Paris Olympics, it is now a global community dedicated to transforming our urban waterways. There is also the option for organizations to become signatories. Globizen has just applied to be one, and maybe you'd like to do the same.

Photo: Helsinki by Kuvio

I spent the past week listening to this Bankless podcast with Vitalik Buterin (the Canadian programmer and co-founder of Ethereum). It took me a week because I was listening to it off and on while I was in the car, headed to and from One Delisle and other meetings. But it's a fascinating episode. I think Vitalik is easily one of the most important minds of our generation.

But let me be honest and say that I wasn't able to follow everything in the podcast. I clearly still have a lot to learn when it comes to cryptography. For this reason, I'm not going to recommend that you all watch/listen to the episode — not unless you're prepared to go in deep. This is also supposed to be a blog for city builders (at least most of the time).

But I did want to share one takeaway that I found interesting.

In the episode, Vitalik describes Ethereum as the world's ledger. This maybe won't mean very much if you're not familiar with crypto, but the goal is a universal, permissionless, and censorship-resistant place for recording and securing basically everything: property title records, financial assets, AI-generated cat videos, and so on. Put another way, Ethereum wants to become a foundational layer of trust for the world.

Then, later in the episode, they somehow get onto the topic of dictators. There was a general acknowledgment that dictatorships do have their benefits, but that they also have obvious downfalls. Ideally, we would have a best-of-both-worlds scenario. We want the efficiencies of dictatorships, with all of the benefits of capitalist democracies.

Vitalik refers to this scenario as "dictators in a box," and he argues that we already have them: they're called entrepreneurs. When you start a company, you get to run within your box, and that is the power of entrepreneurship. But importantly, these boxes exist within a broader framework that includes the rule of law, property rights, freedom of speech, and all the other benefits of capitalist democracies.

This is how Ethereum sees itself — as a foundation on top of which "dictators in a box" can build new ideas, businesses, and opportunities. And because of this layering, it will be Ethereum that provides the backstop against people doing bad things, like stealing someone's crypto or falsely claiming that they hold title to a property when they don't.

I found this analogy fascinating, and I think it offers a glimpse of what's at stake if/when Ethereum becomes what it's aiming to become — the world's ledger.