Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 753

Late 19th century and early 20th century architecture and industrial design is known for the axiom, "form follows function." I think of the German Bauhaus School when I hear this, but supposedly it can be attributed to American architect Louis Sullivan . Either way, it was meant to represent a functionalist approach to architecture and design, which was, as is often the case, a reaction to what had come before it.

It was Modernist architects eschewing decorative elements or what was referred to at the time as "ornament." If it didn't serve a functional purpose, it was to be removed. Nothing was to be superfluous. And similarly, if the function of something didn't change, there was no need to change its form.

Of course, if it was truly all about function, one could argue that there should have been a great deal of variation in the resulting forms. But instead, the designs that emerged out of schools, such as the Bauhaus, are some of the most recognizable in the world. That is true even to this day.

Which is why I think this is a great line from Witold Rybczynski (taken from a recent post about the book iBauhaus): " It is also a quintessentially Bauhaus example of form follows predetermined aesthetics rather than form follows function ." Ouch. The difference here is that Witold obviously isn't a fan of the Bauhaus or of Modernism, whereas this period of time is what inspired me the most as a student of architecture.

Photo by  Marina Reich  on  Unsplash

On Monday it was reported -- by the Wall Street Journal , Tech Crunch, and others -- that Uber will be laying off another 3,000 employees and closing 45 of its offices around the world. Here is a quote from TechCrunch :

“I knew that I had to make a hard decision, not because we are a public company, or to protect or stock price, or to please our Board or investors,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote to employees today in a memo, viewed by TechCrunch. “I had to make this decision because our very future as an essential service for the cities of the world — our being there for millions of people and businesses who rely on us — demands it. We must establish ourselves as a self-sustaining enterprise that no longer relies on new capital or investors to keep growing, expanding, and innovating.”

According to this SEC filing , the company expects to pay approximately $110 million to $140 million in severance and other termination benefits, and somewhere between $65 million to $80 million in costs related to closing its offices.

All of this is, of course, being driven by a steep decline in ride bookings, which is about 70% of the company's revenue. Ride bookings were down 80% in April from a year earlier. For Q1 2020, they were down about 5% compared to 2019.

Uber Eats has seen a spike in demand with people staying at home. Bookings were up 52% in Q1 2020 from a year earlier. The problem is that, unlike its rides business, their food delivery business is far from profitable. That's the point of the possible merger with Grubhub .

The company has said that they are seeing some signs of a recovery in markets that have begun to reopen. But it's too early to predict what that will really look like. The hole is pretty deep.

Pre-COVID, ride hailing demand tended to surge on the weekends as people went out to restaurants, bars, and clubs. So presumably those activities will need to return for its revenue to return. But I also think we could see a spike because of people being nervous to take public transit .

Either way, the company is making some really tough decisions right now. But it seems to be doing what it needs to do in order to get to the other side of this and become a self-sustaining and profitable business. Full disclosure: I own some $UBER.

Chart: Uber Q1 2020 results

On Saturday, Toronto closed a few of its major roads, including Lake Shore Boulevard West, to provide more space for outdoor activities and social distancing. A number of "quiet streets" were also created last week. These now only allow local vehicular traffic. This, of course, isn't anything novel. Most cities around the world have been reallocating their public space in the wake of this pandemic, with many hoping that some of these changes will stick.

I rode my bike out to the Humber Bay Shores on the weekend (where I took the above photo) and it was clearly the fix that we needed. Our current waterfront trails simply cannot safely accommodate the volume of people who are out right now on the weekends. I reckon that, under normal circumstances, a good percentage of these runners, cyclists, and rollerbladers would probably be on a patio drinking. That's not possible right now, so demand for outdoor activities is way up. (Entirely unproven theory.)

But as is always the case, changes like this make a lot of people grumpy. Traffic got backed up on Lake Shore and the regular "war against the car" narrative flared up. I'm not sure where all these cars were going, but they were out in the sunshine trying to go places. So we have a situation where the reallocation of public space has flipped the supply and demand imbalance to another user -- drivers. Now it's us versus them: "Isn't there already more than enough room on those big bike trails?"

I'm frankly tired of this never ending debate, which is why I have argued before that we could use better data and better metrics. How many people are we moving with the decisions we are making? How many people are we accommodating per square meter of space? Where are users of this public space coming from? What performance standards are we trying to meet and/or maintain? What is the most equitable allocation of a finite amount of space?

But perhaps I'm naive to think that people might listen to facts.