Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 692

The Commons Project and the World Economic Forum are piloting an initiative right now called the CommonPass framework , and a number of airlines, including Lufthansa and Swiss International Air, are expected to start rolling it out before the end of the year .

What the CommonPass does is allow people and travelers to verify their health status via a digital certificate on their phone. Right now it can confirm that you've tested negative for COVID-19 and eventually it will confirm if you've received a valid vaccination.

The framework also asks countries to publish their travel entry criteria in a standard format, so that it's easy to update and it can be globally understood.

Of course, much like all of the exposure alert apps that are out there, this is only really useful if people and companies actually start using it. But the travel industry knows that for customer confidence to return, people are going to need to feel safe again. And a digital health pass is one way to help with that.

Here is a short video explaining how the CommonPass works. If you can't see it below, click here .

https://youtu.be/hvHxMA1kA-g

Earlier this month, Vancouver City Council approved a plan that will have staff developing a "transport pricing" strategy for the city's core . (Transport pricing is just another term for road pricing or congestion pricing.) The plan is for staff to go away and work on this and then report back to Council with a pricing strategy sometime in 2022. At that point Council will look to approve the plan and it will all get implemented by 2025. Or at least that's the plan. I remain somewhat skeptical because Vancouver certainly isn't the first Canadian city to look at pricing its roads and congestion. Toronto has tried and failed. And so if Vancouver does end up doing this, they'll likely be the first city in the country.

So why are they doing this, or least trying to do this? Well, if you're a regular reader of this blog you'll know that I've been a supporter of road pricing for many years. Lots of old posts over here . But in the case of Vancouver, their stated goals are really as follows: 1) They want to reduce congestion and encourage people to use other forms of mobility; 2) they want to reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2030; and 3) they want another revenue stream that can be used to fund things like transit and active transport. Put differently, it's about pricing/taxing the things that we want less of and then using that money to pay for the things we want more of.

Some of you might be wondering whether this is a good idea at a time when the centralizing pull of cities is being called into question. But I think it's important to keep in mind that Vancouver thinks it needs at least five years to implement its transport pricing. We'll be living through the roaring twenties by then. I am also a firm believer that cities are going to snap back significantly faster than most people think.

Here is an interesting article from the Financial Times talking about the quiet move of people and companies from Hong Kong to Singapore. I say quiet, because apparently Hong Kong-based companies are reluctant to overtly signal that they are setting up offices and moving some of their executives out of the city, in case that starts to upset people over in Beijing.

But the real estate market in Singapore seems to be benefitting from some of these macro trends, as well from the city-state's handling of the coronavirus. This is despite there being a 25% stamp duty tax on foreign property purchases (US nationals and a few others are exempt) and despite the fact that the economy shrank in the second quarter of this year by the largest percentage (13.2%) since independence in 1965.

According to FT, there were 2,362 residential property transactions in the core central region of Singapore in the first 9 month of this year. This compares to 1,962 transactions for the same period last year. Of these total sales, 260 residential homes were sold to foreign nationals this year (~11%), compared to 316 last year (~16%). While this is obviously a decline, including a decline in the percentage sold to foreign nationals, it still feels pretty significant given that the borders were presumably closed, or largely closed, earlier this year.

Apparently 75% of the above 260 homes were sold to buyers from either mainland China or Hong Kong. I don't know how this percentage compares to last year. But the narrative out there right now is that it is up (along with office leasing by foreign companies) and that Singapore is a pretty safe place to put your money right now.

Photo by Kirill Petropavlov on Unsplash