Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
The Penn Institute for Urban Research has just launched a new initiative called, Cities and Contagion: Lessons from COVID-19. The inaugural piece is a special edition of its Urban Link publication. But going forward, the initiative is planned to include not only publications, but a resource library, convenings (online and offline, when appropriate), and research projects. The objective is to bring together experts from different disciplines to discuss the impacts of this pandemic on cities, as well as the possible responses going forward. You can find the first set of articles, here. Some of the contributions include, “Agglomeration economies are not going away” (Jessie Handbury) and, “There’s no substitute for cities” (Richard Voith and Susan Wachter). The titles alone should give you a taste of what you can expect from this first publication.
The work that @BillGates and @melindagates are doing doesn’t get publicized nearly enough. The slow grind of trying to eradicate global disease doesn’t drive impressions.
After watching the docuseries, Inside Bill’s Brain, I couldn’t help but think that the work he and Melinda are doing isn’t getting nearly enough exposure. Here they are working tirelessly to eradicate global diseases, like polio, and find new ways to combat climate change. And yet relatively little was done after Bill went on stage five years ago and warned us that a global pandemic could strike at any time. Why? Probably because most of us thought it wouldn’t happen to us in the developed world.
But obviously it did happen and along with that Bill has emerged as a level-headed voice of reason. He is calm, serious, and matter of fact about what we know, what we don’t know, and what is going to need to happen for us to make it to the other side of this. In his latest long-form blog post (which is also available for download as a PDF), he calls our current situation “the first modern pandemic”, as well as Pandemic I. That should signal to you that he continues to believe there will be others.
In it, he summarizes the innovation that will need to happen into five categories: treatments, vaccines, testing, contact tracing, and policies for opening up. Among many other things, he gets into the realities (and timelines) of developing an effective vaccine for the world, as well as the shortcomings of the contact tracing tech that many companies, including Apple and Google, are currently building. I would encourage all of you to have a read.
Many of us are now working out from home. The Financial Times just reported that Peloton experienced its highest level of participation last week. Some 23,000 people tuned in for one of its streamed classes. Naturally, anything that was possible to go online has gone online.
I’ve never really been a class guy, but I’ve been a regular at a gym since high school and it’s one of the things I’m most looking forward to getting back to as things subside. For many, the gym is a kind of third place. Though I would imagine it’s not the best place to hangout during a pandemic.
According to FT, the fitness industry was among the first to suffer in the UK (~£5.1bn industry), showing signs of decline even before any government lockdown. The UK also had one of the most profitable fitness industries in Europe. Here’s an interesting chart comparing gym penetration to revenue per club.
It’s interesting to note some of the outliers. Latin America has low penetration and low average revenue per club. And parts of Asia — notably Hong Kong and China — have relatively high average revenue per club, but still have fairly low penetration percentages. Do only rich people go to the gym in Hong Kong?
This chart maybe makes it seem like nobody in Latin America is working out. But if you, instead, look at the number of fitness clubs in each country, the data looks vastly different. In this case, there are two very clear outliers: the United States and Brazil. (The below chart is from Statista and is based on 2017 data.)
But Brazil also happens to be the most populous country in Latin America with around 209 million people. So let’s consider this chart on a per capita basis against, oh I don’t know, the US (~328 million), the UK (~67 million), and Canada (~38 million). Once again, the ranking switches. Brazil and Canada now come out on top with around 16 fitness clubs per 100,000 people. (I guess we’re just as body conscious as the Brazilians.) This is in comparison to 12 per for the US and 10 per for the UK.
So what does this all mean for our post-COVID-19 world? Who knows. But I’ll sure as hell be at the gym.
Just over a month ago, as North America was beginning its lockdown, the Europeans were the ones showing us how to stay sane in quarantine through balcony orchestras and viral internet videos. Now we’re looking to them for how best to reopen the economy and minimize the number of fits and starts.
This morning Spain recorded its lowest daily death rate from the coronavirus. It is beginning to prepare for a phased relaxation of its lockdown rules. Things will not return to normal overnight. [Financial Times]
Spain allowed construction activity and manufacturing to resume this past week. As a reminder, Spain’s strict lockdown started on March 14. [New York Times]
Bookstores are open in Venice, but that’s about it. Customers have to enter one at a time, or schedule an appointment. Hotels, restaurants, and cafes remain shuttered. It is believed that at least 1/6th of all Italian restaurants and bars will not survive. Reopening is not happening uniformly across Italy’s 20 regions. [Wall Street Journal]
Last week, Denmark became the first country in the Western world to reopen elementary schools. The desks are far apart and teaching outside is being maximized, but some/many are concerned that this is too soon. Are we prioritizing the economy (i.e. free up the parents) over the health of our children? [New York Times]
The Czech Republic currently has one of the lowest number of cases on the continent. But hardware stores and bike shops are some of the only nonessential businesses that are allowed to be open. The Easter weekend saw an over 60% increase in year-over-year sales. Biking is something to do right now. [Wall Street Journal]
On Monday, the lockdown will be further relaxed by the Czech government. Weddings of up to 10 people will start to be allowed. Gyms are expected to open on May 11, but their change rooms will remain closed. (I’m surprised by this one.) Malls, hotels, and indoor restaurants aren’t expected to reopen until June 8 at the earliest. Should the number of new daily cases exceed 400 going forward, the government has said it will reimpose a lockdown. [Wall Street Journal]
The UK is not yet considering a relaxation of its lockdown. As of Sunday, the situation remains “deeply worrying.” The UK currently has the 5th highest national death toll. [Globe and Mail]
On April 13, Emmanuel Macron announced that France would begin a phased reopening of its economy — schools and some businesses — starting on May 11. This is a unique approach. He gave a firm date, well into the future. What if this doesn’t make sense when the time comes? Clearly the government felt that the psychological benefits of a firm date outweighed the potential risks. Minimize uncertainty during an uncertain time. [Le Monde]
Lots of discussion around the porosity of borders. Logically, there’s a view that unless there’s a common strategy, it’s better to keep borders closed. But what are the economic implications of doing that? [New York Times]
Above is a chart from Moovit showing usage from January 15, 2020 to April 12, 2020, for a collection of US cities including San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and others. Early March is when usage started to really fall off, with most of the cities now sitting somewhere around 70-75% below January levels.
For the most part, the cities included in this chart have followed a similar trajectory. But there are a couple of outliers. Philadelphia doesn’t seem to have fallen quite as much as other major US cities (-55.7% as of April 12, 2020). I’m not sure why. San Francisco looks to have “corrected” a lot faster. Perhaps because of an easier/quicker shift to working from home? And then there’s Seattle.
The first confirmed US case of COVID-19 occurred in the Seattle area on January 21, 2020. Looking at the above chart (and implying causation), that single case appears to have had an immediate impact on transit usage. Over the subsequent three days, ridership dropped to -4%, -8.3% and then to -9.1%. Usage then remained consistently lower relative to all of the other cities in this index.
Was that it? Did Seattleite’s behaviors really change that quickly? (And yes, I did have to look up the demonym for the fine people of Seattle.)
This week it was announced that Foursquare and Factual are planning to merge. Both use location data to improve advertising and overall business intelligence. But unlike Foursquare, Factual doesn’t have a consumer-facing app. So most of us probably haven’t heard of them before. But they are some of the data and tech behind many of the companies that we do all know, including Starbucks.
I have long been fascinated by location-based startups — like Foursquare — because they are inherently spatial. And how we move about our cities and spaces is rich with information. Companies want this data because, among other things, it is a register of intent. Me going somewhere signals certain things, including where else my kind might want to go.
But location data can also be used for many other things beyond advertising and retail analytics. Foursquare has started sharing aggregated and anonymized foot traffic data with local governments and public health officials in the fight against COVID-19. That data is currently powering http://www.visitdata.org. Foursquare is also publishing a regular insights report.
Here is a chart from them showing casino visits in Clark County since March 1:
In many ways this chart is fairly obvious. In fact, it actually mirrors my own journey into isolation. After the NBA shutdown on Wednesday, March 11, things started to feel pretty real and on Friday I was working from home. But there’s a lot more that can be done with location data and there’s a lot more that will be done going forward. I am confident that will help not only business, but also society more broadly.
There’s a lot of speculation (that’s all you can really do) about what our world is going to look like on the other side of this pandemic.
I think it’s easy to overreach at a time like this and prognosticate dramatic change — such as the demise of cities and urbanity as we know it. But while I do believe that there are bound to be changes, I also know that after 9/11 most of us eventually stopped being afraid of flying and of being in tall buildings. We forgot and moved on.
So, what might change?
Scott Galloway argued on his blog today that “things won’t change as much as they will accelerate.” In other words, this pandemic is simply going to make the future happen faster. And one of those things is going to be a faster shift to online for higher education. It is untenable for education costs to continue increasing at the pace that they have been.
In this recent Intelligencer interview with Chamath Palihapitiya, he puts forward the idea that medical data might start to be used publicly. Meaning that, after this is all done, we might be willing to give up a certain amount of our personal freedom in exchange for knowing whether we’re in a restaurant with someone who is shedding a communicable disease.
And finally, Richard Florida recently published this online talk about how cities can bounce back from COVID-19. In it, he argues that, yes, cities will survive and that it could actually reinforce the “winner-take-all urbanism” that we have already been seeing.
This, of course, is really just the start of the conversation.
The following video was published last week showing the “secondary locations of anonymized mobile devices that were active at a single Ft. Lauderdale beach during spring break.” Said differently, the company used anonymized mobile phone data to see where spring breakers went after they left the beach. This was in order to better understand how they may have contributed to the spread of COVID-19. If you can’t see the video below, click here.
Want to see the true potential impact of ignoring social distancing? Through a partnership with @xmodesocial, we analyzed secondary locations of anonymized mobile devices that were active at a single Ft. Lauderdale beach during spring break. This is where they went across the US: pic.twitter.com/3A3ePn9Vin
The video is astonishing for two reasons. One, it shows you the extreme reach of just one beach in South Florida. Imagine if they had analyzed all of the beaches up and down the coast. And two, a lot of you are probably freaked out that this sort of mobile phone data is available to private companies. If you’d like to learn more about how this all works, check out this opinion piece from the New York Times.
Smartphone user data is hugely valuable at a time like this. Which is why governments all over the world from Israel to South Korea are using aggregated telecom data to try and track how their citizens are moving during this pandemic.
Some are calling this a violation of digital rights. I don’t know enough to comment on that specifically, but I do know that the value to society as a whole is clear. It strikes me that if we knew (1) who was infected (you know this by doing widespread testing), (2) where people have been, and (3) where people are today, we would be in a much better position to contain the spread.
To that end, Singapore’s Ministry of Health has been publicizing a surprising amount of information regarding its cases. And that data has been in turn made into interactive maps. You can see who is infected, where they live and work, which hospital they were admitted to, and so on. Is this an overshare? Or is this price of collective health and security?
The New York Times has similarly gone and visualized the movement of people and the virus using data from major telecoms, Baidu, and other sources; though in this case it is more of a retrospective view of what went wrong as opposed to a proactive management tool. The argument they make is that Wuhan’s lockdown was too little, too late.
According to the NY Times, 175,000 people left Wuhan on January 1st alone. Throughout the month of January, outbound travel from Wuhan accelerated as many started to fear a lockdown. About 7 million people left in January. Where they travelled to can be found here. Would it be too draconian to use this kind of mobile phone data to see who is obeying a lockdown and who is not?
The Financial Times published the following chart last night. It shows the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases around the world, across the number of days since the 100th case in that particular country. The message here is that most western countries appear to be on a similar trajectory. (The grey dotted line represents a 33% daily increase.) Whereas in Asia, and in particular Hong Kong and Singapore, they have seemingly managed to slow the spread.
Now, there are a number of possible explanations for the outliers; everything from stricter quarantine rules to more rigorous testing. There’s also an argument that Hong Kong and Singapore were better prepared as a result of the SARS outbreak in 2002. (More on these explanations, here.) But the other factor at play seems to be climate.
A recent study (by Jingyuan Wang, Ke Tang, Kai Feng, and Weifeng Lv) has concluded that, like the flu, the transmission of COVID-19 appears to be significantly impacted by both air temperature and relative humidity. In their research, they looked at the reproductive number (R), or the severity of infectiousness, for all Chinese cities with more than 40 cases between January 21 to 23, 2020. (Large-scale government interventions began on January 24, 2020 and would have therefore skewed the numbers.)
What they found was that for every one degree Celsius increase in temperature and every one degree Celsius increase in relative humidity, the reproductive numbers drop by 0.0383 and 0.0224, respectively. Air temperature, in other words, has more of a positive impact on containing spread than relative humidity — which feels right. That is also apparent when you look at the above charts. Take note of Korea, Iran, and Italy near the top left corner of the temperature chart.
If you’d like to download a full copy of the research paper, click here.
