Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 748

A friend of mine called me out today for not using my online presence -- both social media and this blog -- to share my views on the horrible tragedies that are taking place right now in the United States and the world. She is right. And it is certainly something that I have been thinking about. But as I mulled it over in my head, it just didn't feel right to glibly share a few social media posts and consider my contributions complete. For almost 7 years, this blog has been my public voice and this blog is where I figured it should show up when I was ready.

My view is that there are really two tragedies taking place right now. The first started with the murder of George Floyd. It was truly awful, and it is symptomatic of some fundamental issues that remain in our society. I support the demonstrations that have ensued and I am pleased to see people and companies taking action. To give one example, Goldman Sachs today announced the creation of a $10 million fund for Racial Equity . If any of you know of any causes that should be supported or of any actions that you believe should be taken, I would encourage you to share them in the comment section below or to email them to me directly.

The second tragedy is the looting that has followed tragedy number one. Whoever is doing it, I think it is counterproductive and I think it serves to obscure the systemic problems that we know need to be addressed. I was reading through this Journal article today about the impact that looting is having on small black-owned businesses in Philadelphia -- a city that is near and dear to me. It makes me both sad and frustrated that these businesses are scrambling to post up "Black Owned" signs in their windows in an effort to be spared from the chaos.

The article goes on to quantify the number of US small businesses in mostly black areas that have enough cash on hand to survive 14 days or more. Very few do. In fact, almost none of them do. The number for mostly black areas is only about 5.3%. This is compared to 70.4% for mostly white areas and 97.9% for mostly Asian areas. This is a scary statistic that only amplifies the severity of tragedy number two. This looting is delivering a second blow to small businesses that were already reeling on the ground from COVID-19.

Tragedy number one and the push for racial equity and positive change is the focus here.

Update: Minor edits were done to this post in an attempt to clarify its original intent.

This is an interesting article about Amazon's delivery network, which is now the 4th largest in the United States. Here are the numbers (most of which are as of 2019):

• Since 2014, Amazon has spent $39 billion building out its delivery network. When you add in warehouses and airplanes, this number increases to about $60 billion. As of 2019, Amazon leased 97% of its fulfillment and data center spaces.

• Amazon is becoming increasingly vertically integrated. Last year, Amazon delivered about 58% of the 4.5 billion parcels that it shipped to US consumers. This represents about 22% of all online retail deliveries.

• Outside of the US, Amazon still handles close to 50% of its own order deliveries. By 2025, Bank of America Global Research is predicting that Amazon could grow to handle somewhere between 38% and 49% of all online order deliveries in the US.

• Amazon is the 4th largest in terms of US package deliveries (2019), behind FedEx, UPS, and USPS (in that order).

• Amazon's fulfillment network roughly entails: receiving centers -> fulfillment centers -> sortation centers -> last-mile delivery stations. It's a hub and spoke system with the physical real estate naturally getting smaller as you get closer to the end destination. For a lot more information on their network, click here .

At this point, it is well known that I am a big fan of neon. It is something that we have obviously worked to incorporate into our Junction House project through things like our rooftop placemaking sign (it's actually LED), our collaboration with local artist Thrush Holmes (his work incorporates neon), and the neon popup gallery that we hosted last year in collaboration with the Downtown Yonge BIA and Neon Demon Studio. So it was no surprise that a friend of mine sent me an ArchDaily article this morning talking about how neon lighting shapes architecture .

What I like about the piece, and the pictures it includes, is that it emphasize the spatial qualities and potential of neon. For a lot of us, neon has come to represent brash advertising. Neon is bright. That was and is great for advertising. But that association has been changing. Even cities like Hong Kong, which have for so long been synonymous with neon , are starting to lose that form of advertising. I'm not saying that loss is a good thing. But I do think that we are now seeing neon being used in completely different ways. It has become more creative. It has become architectural.

Below is an excerpt from the ArchDaily article that speaks to this same idea. But what you really want to do is shoot over and look at all of the photos.

Yet because neon is so fundamentally associated with signage, which can feel limiting or kitschy for some architects, it is often neglected.  Rudi Stern  writes further that “Unfortunately for many architects, neon is the last shoddy pink ‘pizza’ sign they have seen, and they summarily reject a medium that offers great promise as a spatial and environmental element.” Thus, despite its historical and commercial associations, neon has the potential to be even more than retro symbols or cosmopolitan phrases. Abstract designs, atmospheric colors, and the kinetic properties of light combined can completely alter a space even without references to a historical aesthetic or explicit messages. In the images of the  With.It Home  below, BodinChapa Architects have used neon in a non-representational way to create a stunningly memorable  James Turrell -esque room that is simultaneously tranquil and radiant.  Neon  light has the power to completely transform a room even if used in as simple a way as lining the corners of the ceiling, due to the unique properties of light in conversation with the sense of space itself. If architects can move past its commercial associations and investigate its relationship to architectural space, neon can become an even more powerful atmospheric element than it is already.

Photo by  Yuiizaa September  on  Unsplash