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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Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
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Brandon DonnellyStrava's global cycling heatmap
Yesterday morning I went cycling in High Park to try and condition myself for the Bike for Brain Health ride that I have coming up. The Park is such an incredible amenity and I love being so close to it. Of course, before I set out, I turned on my Apple Watch and Garmin computer so that I could track it all in Strava. This has become such a big part of cycling (and working out in general). We're all data obsessed. Everyone wants to track their route, their speed, their heart rate, and whatever else.
The result is that Strava collects mountains of data about the way people actively move about in cities — data on everything from cycling to backcountry skiing. Some of this aggregated/anonymized data is available to the public via their global heatmap, but much more of it is available to urban planners and active transportation groups around the world. In fact, this is part of what Strava does: they help city builders. Here are some urban case studies spanning Rio de Janeiro to Park City.
Looking at central Toronto, our heatmap looks like this:
Yesterday morning I went cycling in High Park to try and condition myself for the Bike for Brain Health ride that I have coming up. The Park is such an incredible amenity and I love being so close to it. Of course, before I set out, I turned on my Apple Watch and Garmin computer so that I could track it all in Strava. This has become such a big part of cycling (and working out in general). We're all data obsessed. Everyone wants to track their route, their speed, their heart rate, and whatever else.
The result is that Strava collects mountains of data about the way people actively move about in cities — data on everything from cycling to backcountry skiing. Some of this aggregated/anonymized data is available to the public via their global heatmap, but much more of it is available to urban planners and active transportation groups around the world. In fact, this is part of what Strava does: they help city builders. Here are some urban case studies spanning Rio de Janeiro to Park City.
Looking at central Toronto, our heatmap looks like this:
Support Brandon Donnelly
Brandon DonnellyStrava's global cycling heatmap
Subscribe to Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
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...
What is immediately noticeable is that cyclists will go where they feel safe. And that generally means streets with dedicated bike lanes. Looking at the above map, you can see that some of the most popular north-south routes are Shaw Street, Beverley Street/St. George Street, and Sherbourne Street. All of these streets have dedicated bike lanes. In the east-west direction, it's also clear that Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue form a hugely important crosstown artery. It is widely used from Etobicoke all the way to Scarborough.
At the same time, these maps start to show where there are broken links in the network. Annette Street and a portion of Dupont Street are, for example, widely used until you get east of the Junction Triangle. Then it falls off. This is unsurprising because it's a stretch of Dupont that isn't very friendly to cyclists. I know I certainly try and avoid it. Instead, we see that cyclists seem to be shifting northward to Davenport, which has a nice bike lane.
This is just one example, and I'm sure there's a lot of other takeaways that can be gleaned from Strava's data. So if you're a city builder and you aren't already leveraging this dataset, you may want to consider applying for a Metro Partnership. I'll be sure to continue doing my part and feeding it data about my laps in High Park and my stops for burgers and croissant sandwiches.
What is immediately noticeable is that cyclists will go where they feel safe. And that generally means streets with dedicated bike lanes. Looking at the above map, you can see that some of the most popular north-south routes are Shaw Street, Beverley Street/St. George Street, and Sherbourne Street. All of these streets have dedicated bike lanes. In the east-west direction, it's also clear that Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue form a hugely important crosstown artery. It is widely used from Etobicoke all the way to Scarborough.
At the same time, these maps start to show where there are broken links in the network. Annette Street and a portion of Dupont Street are, for example, widely used until you get east of the Junction Triangle. Then it falls off. This is unsurprising because it's a stretch of Dupont that isn't very friendly to cyclists. I know I certainly try and avoid it. Instead, we see that cyclists seem to be shifting northward to Davenport, which has a nice bike lane.
This is just one example, and I'm sure there's a lot of other takeaways that can be gleaned from Strava's data. So if you're a city builder and you aren't already leveraging this dataset, you may want to consider applying for a Metro Partnership. I'll be sure to continue doing my part and feeding it data about my laps in High Park and my stops for burgers and croissant sandwiches.
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Strava's global cycling heatmap https://brandondonnelly.com/stravas-global-cycling-heatmap