"With nearly 195mn followers, he is America’s most influential purveyor of disinformation. In total he has made 50 posts since January 1 that have been debunked by independent fact checkers ... These were viewed 1.2bn times."
This is exactly right.
Phase 1: Social/ Physical Distancing for 4-8 weeks to flatten the curve
Phase 2: A New Normal Returns in Summer
Phase 3: Massive/ Universal Testing & Isolation of those with the virus combined with better therapies
Phase 4: Vaccine
Just think about how much more damage will be inflicted in three more years. It is almost like purposeful destruction of every asset in the knowledge economy ...
"We can either lockdown until we have a vaccine (12–18 months), or we can ramp up free widespread testing (1 month) and get back to business." h/t:
@Noahpinion
:
Happiness with WFH directly related to length of commute. Survey by
@HUBBLE_space
HT
@axios
Takeaways:
#SMP1
plan buildings and transport together (routine life doesn't require a car!)
More/safer bike/walk infrastructure. Biking is the happiest mode
"In June 2020, Zillow Group ... announced that employees could move anywhere in the country & never return to an office. The company now has more than 300 employees living in New York City, a 15% increase compared with two years earlier."
1. I have been a professor for almost 40 years now. Let me give you my perspective on what I think has happened on the political/ideological orientation university campuses that seems to have reached a recent boiling point.
11. The 20 finalists would be well-served by making a pact to NO INCENTIVES. These mayors and economic professionals know one another & can do it. One of a number of professional organizations could sponsor.
Toronto’s ravines may be my favorite place in the world. The juxtaposition of the natural and built environment or should I say their integration, is to me the greatest thing about Toronto. I can’t think of any city that does this better.
1. Amazon has shown its true colors. It refuses to deal reasonably with its hometown of Seattle or any community that asks for it to pay its freight. This is abusive & shows how awful the entire process was & is.
BREAKING: After saying it won't build part of HQ2 in NYC, Amazon adds that it does not intend to re-open the search process and will only "proceed in northern Virginia and Nashville" at this time.
"We are learning that hospitals might be the main Covid-19 carriers ... They are rapidly populated by infected patients, facilitating transmission to uninfected patients.”
PAY ATTENTION CITIES!!!!
“A bicycle, for me, was the only way to get around the city. If I wanted to meet some of my friends, travel across the city, go to school, play basketball—anything—the bicycle was the way I got around.”
Yes, of course they're concentration camps. They aren't the unique subset of death camps that were invented by the Nazis for genocide, or even Arctic Gulag camps built for hard labor. But they're camps created to punish a whole class of civilians via mass detention without trial.
We were pedalling side-by-side today, when it suddenly it hit us:
After 16 months of living in the Netherlands, we haven’t once felt unsafe, uncomfortable, or unwelcome while cycling.
Not because drivers are better behaved. Because streets are designed to minimize their threat.
Even stranger, I feel melancholy about returning to the old normal. I have forged much deeper connection to family & friends. I have gotten off the rat race. I found something deeper in this strange pandemic life that I am not sure I want to give up ..
1. Race to the Bottom - That is another possible take/implication of what is happening with the rise of remote work & the geographic shifts being accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic ... One we are not hearing enough about ...
With the beautiful weather, I have been cycling regularly in Toronto. The conditions are beyond appalling. Worse than I remembered or imagine. This is a terrible crisis. More people will be hurt. The city's leadership is disgraceful on this.
Here is my view on university encampments. I fully support the right to protest. But a university campus is no place for an encampment of any kind for any agenda. It threatens some and impedes the rights of many. It can invite in bad actors & outsiders with their own agendas and
We shouldn’t mourn the loss of the central business district, giant retail complexes, or commercial office towers. Let’s use the opportunity to rebuild cities & suburbs around much more integrated 15 minute neighborhoods. And do so in ways that are far more inclusive & resilient.
I don’t believe it myself. But if you came back from the future and told me 50-story office buildings primarily used by people with long commutes were the next department stores, I wouldn’t be totally shocked:
7. My real fear is that by simply coming this far Doug Ford i will now take away any advantage Toronto or Ontario have had in competing for American tech projects & chill the climate for US tech investment ...
Say what you want about social media. But I still find this twitter to be one of the best modes of idea exchange of any. I find debates to be civil, interesting & exciting.
"That a trillion-dollar company run by the world’s richest man could run an American Idol auction on more than 230 cities & pick up a handy $3 billion of taxpayer money in the process, is a sad statement of extreme corporate power in our time.”
6. It's like a Trumpist populist running for Governor of a large American Blue State, like California, NY or Massachusetts. That's what makes it especially scary.
Here’s some advice to
@Amazon
@jeffbezos
Give the incentive money back - you don’t need it and the potential brand damage is too great. Pledge to be a good corporate citizen & contribute to affordable housing, workforce development & transit.
I think about this everytime someone says people are leaving cities. The reality is the super-rich are gobbling this up. Prices are stratospheric. As I like to put it, many families would gladly trade their suburban homes lovely 3-4-5 bedroom city townhomes at a similar price
There is pent up market demand in USA for areas like what is pictured below.
They can't be built anymore in any major metro due to legal obstructions, and thus the value gets "bid up" endlessly.
If legalized, developers would waste no time in meeting this demand.
For starters ...
Reduce speed limits
Take away licenses for excessive speeding
Install pedestrian right-of-way cross walks
Eliminate right on red
Stagger light changes to enable peds to cross ahead of traffic
Install a real bike lane system
This is bad. ICE just told students here on student visas that if their school is going online-only this fall, the students must depart the United States and cannot remain through the fall semester.
Compare to average household size.
1930: 4.1 people
1950: 3.7
1950: 3.3
1980: 2.8
1990: 2.6
2017: 2.5
In 1930, average person had 255 SF of space.
In 2017, average person has four times as much - 1063 SF!
Average floor area of a new single-family home:
1920: 1,048 square feet
1930: 1,129
1940: 1,177
1950: 983
1960: 1,289
1970: 1,500
1980: 1,740
1990: 2,080
2000: 2,266
2010: 2,392
2014: 2,657
Free life advice: you don't need all that space.
Memo to the genius leaking info about Crystal City, VA as
#HQ2
selection. You’re not doing Crystal City, VA any favors. And stop treating the NDA you signed like a used napkin.
12.
@amazon
should recalibrate and say it does not want incentives & will work as a partner with these communities to address their issues & challenges of affordable housing, transit, low wage jobs etc.
11. Students would come to my classes or my office and tell me they wanted to help make cities better - more innovative, productive & inclusive - but other classes they were taking basically were teaching this was all gentrification.
1. This is something we turned up in research on Toronto too. We found mental disorders cut across almost every socio-economic category, save for one group: recent immigrants.
.
@ranaflorida
& I just got a visit from Canadian public health authorities checking on our quarantine. We are now being observed doing our Day 8 online Covid test. We are both fully vaccinated. Is it crazy to think such precious public health resources could be put to better use
1. Few surprises on the
#AmazonHQ2
Shortlist:
Atlanta
Austin
Boston
Chicago
ColumbusDallas
Denver
Indianapolis
Los Angeles
Miami
Montgomery County
Nashville,
Newark
New York City
Northern Virginia
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Raleigh
Toronto
D.C.
5. Doug Ford is running on a populist platform in Ontario a province that has much more in common with a large American Blue State like NY or Massachusetts or California.
1. Take a close look at this chart. It a very different & very useful take on downtown recovery of North American cities by my
@UofTCities
colleague
@profchapple
.
"Trump won white voters at every level of class and income. He won workers, he won managers, he won owners, he won robber barons. This is not a working-class coalition; it is a nationalist one."
A Post-Pandemic Prediction in 2 Parts:
1. Cities, dense living, urban amenities will come roaring back as people crave connection in the Roaring 2020s.
2. Office/Central Business Districts will decline as people work from home & do meetings & socialize in actual neighborhoods.
1. The Amazon HQ2 competition is a ruse. As usual, the "game" pits cities & states against each other to come away with the biggest deal. it's time for mayors & governors to organize, opt out & say no.
As an American who lives in Canada (Toronto), I cannot tell you how transformative this is. It will help open the border -too many people can't cross and see their families- & secure trade. This is smart policy in action! Go BIDEN.
BREAKING—White House plans to send 2.5 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca
#covid19
vaccine to Mexico and 1.5 million to Canada. 30 mil doses sit in warehouses.
This comes just as US quietly pressing Mexico to curb migrants coming to the border.
13. I think it’s very easy to see this kind of ideological work. Because it’s not actual research or facts or data. Their research output is basically opinion and essay. Most academics can see straight through that.
Winner-Take-All Urbanism ...
"Just five metropolitan areas—Boston; San Diego; San Francisco; Seattle; and San Jose, Calif.—accounted for 90% of all U.S. high-tech job growth between 2005 to 2017."
@jen_keesmaat
I am now less sure than you. I am rebuffed at every level. I cannot even get my progressive councilor to help make a single street safe. I have never ever seen a culture of neglect & "no" like this. It may sound strange, but "feels" similar to how Americans fail to deal w guns.
1. Let's say colleges and universities can't reopen in the fall, because of fits & starts of the virus or fear of second wave. We need to plan now to reopen classes, dining halls & dorms, but what happens if they can't.