Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 540

This landed in my inbox earlier in the week. And since I think it's important to support Canadian talent and I think it's important for us to continually nurture a Canadian cultural identity, I'm sharing this design prize with all of you today.

Hosted by the University of British Columbia's School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture (SALA), the Margolese Prize is intended to recognize early to mid-career Canadians who are doing outstanding work related to the built environment. This could be in fields like architecture and planning or it could be in adjacent fields.

Nominations are open until April 10, 2022 and you can both nominate yourself and nominate others. The winner will be announced this September and, in addition to a ceremony and presumably a trophy of sorts, the committee will be giving out $50,000. If you'd like to nominate yourself/someone, click here .

Photo of Kyiv, Ukraine by Tanya Pro on Unsplash

I've only hung out in Decentraland a few times. One of the times was to check out a Deadmau5 concert, which was cool, though not quite the same as a live show. But I have no doubt that all of this is a big deal and that I'll probably end up at another virtual concert at some point. JP Morgan, for example, just opened up a virtual banking lounge in Decentraland's Metajuku district, called the Onyx Lounge . They also just released this new report talking about how the metaverse is probably a $1 trillion market opportunity (based on their projected yearly revenues).

Here are some other figures. In 2019, about $54 billion was spent on virtual/digital goods . These are things like game skins. This is compared to $42 billion at movie theaters and $30 billion on recorded music. So things that are purely digital (and have a very low marginal cost) are already a huge deal and people are spending a lot of money on them. Last year, the market cap of NFTs also surpassed $40 billion . The naysayers will tell you that you can just "right-click, save as" instead of spending any crypto on NFT images, but clearly something broader is underway.

JP Morgan is of the opinion that it is only a matter of time before the metaverse infiltrates every sector of the economy in some way, shape, or form. Would you agree?

Image: Decrypt