Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 207

When I first saw this picture of Louis Vuitton's flagship store in Manhattan I thought it was AI. That is where we are right now. When something looks wild, I just automatically assume it's fake. But alas, it's not fake. Louis Vuitton is renovating their flagship store at the corner of 57th Street and 5th Avenue and so, naturally, they decided to completely cover it with luggage facade wraps.

These wraps make the entire building look like six grey trunks stacked on top of each other and are a nod to a 19th century luggage design from the company. They even used real metal details throughout. Apparently the heaviest luggage handle weighs something like 5,000 pounds.

This is wild and remarkable in so many ways. The scale of it is remarkable. This is a 15 storey building concealed entirely by luggage trunks. It also speaks to the scale and dominance of New York as a city. Not every city can absorb a pile of giant luggage trunks and not bat an eye. But in New York, it's just another noteworthy thing within its relentless urban grid.

I also can't help but think of the work of architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown . In 1972, they published a book called Learning from Las Vegas . And in it, they defined two types of contrasting buildings: decorated sheds and ducks . Decorated sheds are, as the name suggests, nondescript buildings. Think big box stores. These buildings get their specificity from signage and other ornament because, without this, they'd just be nondescript sheds.

Duck buildings are, on the other hand, buildings that take on a symbolic form. In other words, their shape and construction tell you what they're all about. The term duck comes from an actual building that looks like a duck, namely The Big Duck on Long Island. This is a building that was built in the 1930s to help promote the owner's duck farming business and is now on the US National Register of Historic Places.

The Big Duck is and was an actual building, whereas Louis Vuitton's trunks are just temporary construction wrap. So they're not exactly the same thing. Still, the similarities are there. Both were erected to promote their respectiveness businesses. And both tell you, through their form, what's meant to happen inside. So in this sense, Louis Vuitton has just created its own Big Duck.

Photo by Brad Dickson via Dezeen

This is an interesting video by Phil Andrews of Maxinomics talking about the economics of Uber and what it could stand to gain from autonomous vehicles.

As part of this, he touches on the exclusive partnership that was announced between Uber and Waymo back in September. That was a big deal.

I find this topic fascinating because it's hard to imagine it not reshaping the landscape of our cities. And it continues to get more real by the day.

In my opinion, we need far better urban data if we're actually going to make evidence-based decisions. Thankfully, there are lots of great companies that are focused on this space. One of them is Eco-Counter , which makes devices to count pedestrians and cyclists, among other things. This is an important job, because as Peter Drucker used to say, "you can't manage what you don't measure."

Let's look at their bike counters. According to their global map , they have 464 of them installed around the world. Montreal has 58 of them, which we've spoken about before , and is an impressive install base. And Toronto looks to have only one, which is located on Bloor Street on the north side of High Park.

The busiest route/counter in Montreal is at St-Denis Street and Rue des Carriéres. So far this year -- up to November 17, 2024 -- this counter has seen an average of just under 5,000 trips per day and a year-to-date total of 1,600,468 trips. Both of these metrics are notably up compared to 2023 when I last looked at the data .

The busiest route in Eco-Counter's entire network is on Boulevard de Sébastopol in Paris (an important main roadway, not a side street). It has seen an average of 13,667 trips per day and a year-to-date total of 4,386,996 trips. Not surprisingly, the Paris counter exhibits less seasonality. People still cycle in the winter in Montreal, but it's less than in the warmer months.

Finally, our lone Toronto counter adjacent to High Park has seen an average of 1,186 trips per day and a year-to-date total of 380,813 trips. Not quite Paris or Montreal (the latter of which has a colder climate), but I would argue that this really isn't an indicative location for Toronto given how underdeveloped the area is . Plus, you need to see each route as part of a network.

If you look at Montreal's top 5 bike counters, all of them have a year-to-date total that exceeds 1 million trips. This is important information if you're trying to make mobility decisions and these are significant figures. Imagine if these millions of people got off their bikes and instead decided to take transit or drive a car. That would change things.

Photo by  Celine Ylmz  on  Unsplash