One of my arguments around return to office is that we have not yet reached a post-pandemic equilibrium. Meaning, we’re still in the process of coming back and it’s probably too early to say where exactly we will end up. The latest data (above) from… Read More
This morning, I came across an FT article talking about how mainland Chinese people are right now flocking to Macau to receive western mRNA vaccines. Apparently the Special Administrative Region has a single hospital offering the western varietals to “tourists”, and lots of people now… Read More
It has become tradition around here that at the end of each year I write down my predictions for the following one. And in 2022, I did that here. The overarching point of writing something like this down publicly is not necessarily to be right… Read More
Past performance, we are often told, is not necessarily indicative of future results. At the same time, history has a funny way of repeating itself. I recently stumbled upon this research paper by Marc Francke (University of Amsterdam) and Matthijs Korevaar (Erasmus School of Economics)… Read More
The Financial Times published an article this week talking about the record number of homes that Londoners bought outside of the boundaries of the city this past year. The total was about 112,780 homes worth some £54.9 billion — again, it was a record in… Read More
Paris just announced plans to become a “100% cycling city.” A follow-up to plan vélo 2015-2020, which saw a doubling of the city’s bike lanes, plan vélo 2021-2026 includes 130 km of new bike lanes and 52 km of pandemic bike lanes that will now… Read More
I jus pre-ordered a copy of Edward Glaeser and David Cutler’s new book called, Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation. (I’m usually a hard copy kind of guy, but I decided to try this one out on Kindle /… Read More
Here are some interesting figures about Venice take from this recent FT article by Chris Allnutt: Tourist visits to Venice last year were estimated to be about 1/5 of what they usually are Short-term rental bookings as of December 2020 were down about 74% year-over-year… Read More
This morning I stumbled up on this conversation between Richard Florida and Ed Glaeser about the post-pandemic city. It’s from September 2020 and that is obvious in some of the comments. Richard Florida (who was in Toronto) remarked that it felt like the pandemic was… Read More
Here are the results from a recent survey by The Harris Poll and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which asked 1,200 residents from the six largest metropolitan areas in the US how they were feeling about urban and suburban life during this pandemic. (The… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 