Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 279

Earlier this month, the new Hudson's tower in Detroit " topped out ." Meaning, they laid the last steel beam at the top of building. This, to me, is fantastic news. ( Here's the official project website in case you're interested.)

The tower, which was designed by New York-based SHoP Architects , is just over 685 feet tall. This makes it the second tallest building in the state of Michigan, after the Renaissance Center. And when it's complete, it will house 1.5 million square feet of office, retail, food, residential, hotel, and event space.

This week it was also announced that General Motors will be moving its headquarters and its 5,000 downtown employees to this new tower. I don't know who will backfill their old space in the Renaissance Center, but that's a topic for a different day. Today, I think we should be talking about the grit and resilience of Detroit.

This is a city that reached a peak population of approximately 1.85 million people in 1950 , had its population decline by more than 65%, and then became the largest city in the US to declare bankruptcy (2013). Now they're building a big ass mixed-use tower in the center of downtown.

👊

One of the common criticisms of bike lanes is that most people don't want to cycle in the winter. I mean, just look at Montreal's winter cycling retention ratio .

But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't invest in cycling infrastructure. Chicago, for instance, has been building out cycling infrastructure over the last few years (2020-2023) at an average rate of approximately 30 miles per year . This is double its rate from 2011-2019. And the results show.

According to recent data from Replica and the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT), Chicago saw the highest growth in cycling among the 10 largest cities in the US between fall 2019 and spring 2023.

Biking overall was up 119%. Crosstown trips were up 180% (bike trips that spanned across four or more neighborhoods). Trips related to shopping were up 117%. And notably, zero-car households were up 207%.

Remember, this is a city that basically has the same weather as Toronto. It gets cold in the winter. And sometimes it snows. But clearly if you build good cycling infrastructure, people will use it.

Back in 2018, Amazon opened its first cashier-less grocery store . The technology -- which it later branded as "Just Walk Out" -- was intended to allow customers to do exactly that. All you had to do was put items into your cart and walk out of the store. And then, through the magic of sophisticated computer vision, machine learning, and lots of sensors, you would be billed and sent a receipt.

However, this month the company announced that it will be moving away from this technology, and instead focusing on its Dash Carts (more on this shortly). It turns out that the technology wasn't nearly automated enough.

Last year, The Information reported that "Just Walk Out" was relying on at least 1,000 off-site workers in India to constantly review video footage and figure out who had bought what. This is why it apparently took so long to receive a bill sometimes; humans far away were working to figure out if that was a persimmon in your hand, or a tomato.

I'm not an expert on this space, but I'm guessing it is not (yet) feasible to do what Uniqlo and other retailers now do with their supply chains and checkouts. So this was the workaround. Whatever the case, Amazon has now said that it will be focusing on its Dash Carts , which are kind of like roaming checkout counters. They come with screens and scales for weighing things.

Obviously the ideal solution is to not have to do or scan anything. But being able to avoid check-out lines still feels like meaningful progress. I just wonder if these smart carts will encourage or discourage spending. Because now everyone will have a live receipt in front of them. That might discourage spending unless you can offset it with rewards and/or other incentives.