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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Whenever you see a best-of-anything ranking, you should probably ask yourself what the hell "best" even means. In this case, Resonance Consultancy is ranking the world's cities based on six alliterative categories: place, people, programming, product, prosperity, and promotion.
Some of these metrics are qualitative, but many are, in fact, quantitative. Number of COVID-19 infections in 2020; number of direct destinations served by the city's airports; number of foreign-born residents; number of top-rated restaurants (TripAdvisor); most Instagram check-ins, and so on.
The result is this list of the world's best cities:
London
New York
Paris
Moscow
Tokyo
Dubai
Singapore
Barcelona
Los Angeles
Madrid
Rome
Chicago
Toronto
San Francisco
Abu Dhabi
I arbitrarily chose the top 15 cities in order to make sure that Toronto was included in this ranking. If you'd like to download a full copy of the 2021 World's Best Cities report, you can do that over here. I recommend you check out their performance criteria.
Toronto, for example, performs very well when it comes to "people." That's fairly consistent across most of these rankings. But it didn't fare so well when it comes to "place." That category includes things like the average number of sunny days and the number of high quality sights & landmarks.
Whenever you see a best-of-anything ranking, you should probably ask yourself what the hell "best" even means. In this case, Resonance Consultancy is ranking the world's cities based on six alliterative categories: place, people, programming, product, prosperity, and promotion.
Some of these metrics are qualitative, but many are, in fact, quantitative. Number of COVID-19 infections in 2020; number of direct destinations served by the city's airports; number of foreign-born residents; number of top-rated restaurants (TripAdvisor); most Instagram check-ins, and so on.
The result is this list of the world's best cities:
London
New York
Paris
Moscow
Tokyo
Dubai
Singapore
Barcelona
Los Angeles
Madrid
Rome
Chicago
Toronto
San Francisco
Abu Dhabi
I arbitrarily chose the top 15 cities in order to make sure that Toronto was included in this ranking. If you'd like to download a full copy of the 2021 World's Best Cities report, you can do that over here. I recommend you check out their performance criteria.
Toronto, for example, performs very well when it comes to "people." That's fairly consistent across most of these rankings. But it didn't fare so well when it comes to "place." That category includes things like the average number of sunny days and the number of high quality sights & landmarks.
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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