Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 728

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There is evidence to suggest, according to this recent Bloomberg Green article as well as many other sources, that we may be hitting "peak meat." That is, the global production of animal proteins appears to be declining. It declined last year in 2019 and that was only the second time since 1961 in which that happened. And this year, the same is projected to happen, which is supposedly unprecedented in modern times.

The big change is that people are eating a lot less beef. In fact, per capita beef production peaked way back in the 1970s and has been slowing declining ever since. The growth over the years has really been coming from chicken. In 1961, 39% of all meat production was beef. As of 2018, that number had declined to 20%. Pork as a percentage of all production has remained more or less consistent. But chicken has basically tripled from 11% to 34%.

From an environmental and climate change standpoint, this is a very good thing. As most of you know, greenhouse gas emissions from the production of beef are vastly higher (about 10x) than for pork and chicken. Chicken is the lowest (see above). At the same time, big bets are being made that this growing love of chicken isn't enough. In the first 7 months of 2020, over $1.4 billion of venture capital was raised for "faux meat" startups ( source ). This is already a significant increase compared to 2019.

This money is expecting the future of meat to be plant-based and cell-based.

All charts from Bloomberg Green .

I installed and setup Health Canada's COVID Alert app this morning.

It's really simple to do that. You don't enter any personal information. You just select which province you're in, agree to let it use your Bluetooth, and give it permission to share the random codes that you collect with its servers (more on this below). The app is then active and working. But to be clear, it doesn't collect your location (it doesn't use GPS or location services). It doesn't collect the places or times that you are next to someone who also has the COVID Alert app. And it doesn't know if you're with someone who was previously diagnosed with COVID-19.

Built on top of the private exposure framework that was collectively developed by Apple and Google , the app works by using Bluetooth to exchange "random codes" between nearby phones that have the app. These are anonymous and random codes that are used to track which phones have been next to which phones for any meaningful period of time. The app also uses Bluetooth signal strength to estimate proximity. So it knows how long your phone has been proximate to someone else's (with the app) and how close they got to each other.

That's pretty much all that happens with the app unless you test positive for COVID-19. At that point, you will be given a one-time key along with your diagnosis. The onus is then on you to anonymously self-report on the app. Once you do that, anyone who was exposed -- i.e. next to your phone in the last 14 days -- will receive an alert on their phone via the app. And since the app doesn't know any names or who anybody is, it's of course all completely anonymous.

It's great to see all of this coming together. The private sector worked to build the underlying framework and now you have government building on top of it to deliver public health tools. I know that some or many of you will be concerned about privacy, but that appears to have been very well thought out . If you haven't already downloaded the app, I would encourage you to check it out. It's available for iOS and Android and can be downloaded over here .

I received an email this week from a senior real estate executive who was sharing the fact that, in response to COVID, he had decided to give up driving completely. He was now cycling everywhere -- whether for work or for personal errands. And it was doing wonders for his health and his overall well-being.

Indeed, this feels like some sort of golden era for urban cycling. Back in May I wrote about how Toronto City Council had just approved the largest ever one-year expansion of bike lanes . Some 40 km. When have we ever moved this quickly and without months (okay, years) of painful debate? Probably never.

Of course, it's not just Toronto. This is happening all over the world. Here are some of the numbers (taken from this recent Journal article ):

• Paris added 400 miles of pop-up bike lanes across the region -- all of which didn't exist before the pandemic - some of the streets being tracked have seen a doubling in usage

• Oakland closed almost 10% of its streets to cars

• Montreal is adding an additional 70 miles of pedestrian and cycle paths

• Bogota is the midst of planning for 47 miles of temporary bike lanes

• The UK has fast tracked over $315 million in capital spending for bike infrastructure -- referring to this as a "once-in-a-generation" opportunity

• New York's bike share service (Citi Bike) saw year-over-year usage surge 67% in the first 10 days of March alone -- before any shelter-in-place rules were even imposed

There are obvious reasons for this rush to build out cycling infrastructure. We're in the midst of a global health crisis and people are staying away from public transit in big numbers . But I think it's also important to keep in mind that in many / most cases, there is really no other viable mobility solution. You cannot take all the people that used to ride the tube in London and plop them into cars. There isn't enough space.

So cities all around the world are doing the sensible thing and acting fast to make sure that it's safer for people to move about on bikes. But as we all know, humans tend to have a bias toward the status quo. And so when this is all said and done, I suspect that many of these pop-ups will end up sticking around. And that will be a good thing for cities.