Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 427

I just learned about the TomTom Traffic Index today. It covers 404 cities across 58 countries, and uses anonymized traffic data from more than 600 million drivers (people who use TomTom's tech) to come up with a list of the cities with the worst traffic congestion.

Here's the global top 10 (for 2021):

And here's the North American top 10 (also for 2021):

The way to interpret these congestion level percentages is to think of them as additional time over and above baseline free-flowing traffic times. For example, a 62% congestion level for Istanbul, means that a trip that would take 30 minutes without any traffic congestion, will instead take, on average, 18.6 minutes longer (0.62 x 30 minutes).

We all like to complain about traffic in our home city, but these percentages certainly help to put things into a global perspective.

It is perhaps well known that the Ford F-Series has been the best selling vehicle for the last 41 years in the US. In 2022, sales surpassed 640,000 trucks, meaning one was sold about every 49 seconds . Of course, much has been written about what this means for overall safety in our cities. According to Axios , the average 8 year old is completely out of view when in front of an F-150. And the death rate of car drivers colliding with a truck versus even an SUV, looks something like this:

Another important thing to point out is what has happened to the bed sizes on these trucks: they have continuously gotten smaller . Between 1961 and 1979, the bed portion occupied 64% of the length of the truck. But starting in 2021, the bed had gotten down to 37%. The reality, at least according to this consumer survey , is that the most frequent use case for these trucks is actually just "shopping/errands." It is not hauling or towing.

So like all cars, and most things, probably the real reason these trucks are so popular is that they evoke a particular self-image. In this case, it is something about appearing "powerful" and "rugged." Lots of people clearly want these adjectives. But even if powerful and rugged aren't what you're going after, it is almost certain that you have simply chosen different words and found different ways to communicate that self-image.

I am really interested in these sorts of spaces . In this case, these is an old brutalist office building in Kanazawa, Japan that was purchased in 2019 by artist Hiraki Sawa . The original intent was to turn it into a co-working space, but eventually the idea evolved into a hybrid "co-being" space that can be rented as a place to stay and/or as a place to facilitate creativity.

The space itself was left mostly raw and exposed, but neon movable walls were inserted by AB Rogers Design that allow you to configure the volumes as you'd like. What's interesting about spaces like these is that they enable play and experimentation. Maybe it also makes money, or maybe it doesn't. But that doesn't seem to be the main point.

The point is to empower creativity. And finding spaces to do this can be tough in competitive markets where demand is consistently outstripping supply. Oftentimes you need some slack in the system so that there's literal breathing room for new ideas, or rich people who can make it so.

Whatever the case, I am a believer that when given the opportunity, people will generally find a way to imagine and create. So if you happen to find yourself in Kanazawa and would like to book this space, which is called Fish Market, click here . Guests are being asked to submit a request explaining how and why they'd like to use the space.

It'll be fun to see what this leads to .

Photos: Takumi Ota via AB Rogers Design