Despite having somewhere around 4,000 employees and being valued at upwards of $15 billion (2021 figure), CloudKitchens remains an incredibly secretive company. In 2020, it was reported that they had spent over $130 million in the preceding two years on properties in about two dozen… Read More
Canada Day weekend was a lot of fun in Toronto. This city was alive and it felt like people had come far and wide to visit downtown. But it was a good reminder that even if all of our cars were electric and even if… Read More
These are two short videos of autonomous Cruise vehicles driving around San Francisco. Cruise, which is owned by General Motors, received a permit from the state of California to operate autonomous vehicles — without a safety driver — in September of last year. In November… Read More
Uber’s recent investor day presentation (link here) is interesting if you’re an investor or thinking about becoming an investor, but it’s also interesting from an urbanism standpoint. Part of the promise of Uber was that it was going to help lure people away from owning… Read More
Food was, not surprisingly, very resilient during this pandemic. In the case of Uber, food delivery became its biggest business (higher gross bookings than mobility). But mobility is coming back (first chart above) as our cities continue to reopen. In fact, Uber’s mobility business is… Read More
This week, Lyft announced that it is going to be selling its autonomous vehicle division to Toyota for some $550 million. (Apparently $200 million of this will be paid upfront, with the remaining $350 million paid out over a five year period.) This is notable… Read More
I was picking up food the other night on Bloor Street (via Uber Eats) and the lineup of delivery drivers outside of the restaurant was at least ten people deep when we arrived. While we were waiting, another handful of drivers pulled over to quickly… Read More
I’ve written about this before on the blog, but one of my qualms about architecture school was that it was too often taboo to talk about business and money. Why? Talking about and understanding the realities of the world doesn’t have to mean that you’re… Read More
Life will feel a lot more normal by spring/summer (Q2). By this time, the various vaccines should be broadly available (at least in the developed world). This is something that never happened during the Spanish Flu. From what I have read, the Spanish Flu lasted… Read More
There is data to suggest that on-demand (OD) mobility services — such as Uber — are increasing vehicle kilometers traveled (i.e. causing greater traffic congestion) by inducing people away from public transit and other forms of urban mobility. This is potentially even more of an… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 