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… Read More
Conventional wisdom suggests that cities are pretty dangerous. There’s crime, the chance of getting killed, and there are lots of cars, some of which have a tendency to fly off the road and do bad things on occasion. And in some ways, this is true.… Read More
One of the most common objections to new housing is that the place is already too crowded and potentially even full. But Jerusalem Demsas’ recently article in The Atlantic about how much people seem to hate other people is a good reminder that the topic… Read More
The global luxury goods market is somewhere around US$300 billion if you exclude fancy cars. And in just 4 years, global luxury spending has flipped from over 60% of it being in Europe and the Americas, to now over 60% of it being in Asia… Read More
It was explained to me this week that Paris has two principal towers: The Eiffel Tower and the awful tower. The awful tower is, of course, the Tour Montparnasse. Completed in 1973, the Tour Montparnasse is tall, brown, monolithic, and seemingly out of place with… Read More
One of the things that I notice about people from Paris is that they’re always very clear on whether they live in Paris or outside of Paris in the banlieues (the suburbs). They’ll say things like, “No I don’t live in Paris. It’s too expensive.… Read More
I have remarked this before, but I’ll say it again anyways: sneakers are very popular in Paris. Everybody seems to be wearing cool and colorful sneakers, regardless of what the rest of their outfit happens to look like. Full business suit? Why yes, you should… Read More
This is a great diagram from Smart Density comparing the urban and regional rail networks of Toronto, London, and Paris. All are at the same scale. What immediately stands out to me — besides Toronto’s relatively miniscule network — is Paris’ compactness. I have said… Read More
Electric scooters are an unsanctioned form of mobility here in Toronto, mostly because people think they’re dangerous, but also because I think people are worried about them cluttering up our sidewalks. The problem with this position is that electric scooters are also a lot of… 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
BRANDON DONNELLY 