Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 764

For years, French photographer Ludwig Favre has been doing a series on the swimming pools of Paris. The first one he photographed (and the first photo below) was the Piscine Pontoise . Designed in 1933 by architect Lucien Pollet, Pontoise was one of four pools that he completed for the Piscines de France at that time. Another one of his designs was the Piscine Molitor (second picture below), which is the most famous of the bunch for a few reasons. It was the place to be seen in Paris when it first opened. It was where the world's first bikini was apparently unveiled. And it was also abandoned and almost demolished, during which time it got filled with street art. If you aren't familiar with the work of Ludwig, I would encourage you to check out his portfolio . He does an incredible job showcasing these pools, as well as many other aspects of our cityscapes.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BMEjI3rDD7j/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/BgiqRztn9Ml/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mzWkuOxz8

I came across this video the other night. (If you can't see it embedded above, click here .) It is a tour of the UK and Ireland's different accents by Andrew Jack . It is an extraordinary demonstration of his skill.

Did he get any of them wrong?

Sadly, Andrew died last month from COVID-19.

The Moovit Public Transit Index has been tracking the impact of COVID-19 on public transit usage around the world . Not surprisingly, people are using transit a lot less.

Above is a chart from Moovit showing usage from January 15, 2020 to April 12, 2020, for a collection of US cities including San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and others. Early March is when usage started to really fall off, with most of the cities now sitting somewhere around 70-75% below January levels.

For the most part, the cities included in this chart have followed a similar trajectory. But there are a couple of outliers. Philadelphia doesn't seem to have fallen quite as much as other major US cities (-55.7% as of April 12, 2020). I'm not sure why. San Francisco looks to have "corrected" a lot faster. Perhaps because of an easier/quicker shift to working from home? And then there's Seattle.

The first confirmed US case of COVID-19 occurred in the Seattle area on January 21, 2020. Looking at the above chart (and implying causation), that single case appears to have had an immediate impact on transit usage. Over the subsequent three days, ridership dropped to -4%, -8.3% and then to -9.1%. Usage then remained consistently lower relative to all of the other cities in this index.

Was that it? Did Seattleite's behaviors really change that quickly? (And yes, I did have to look up the demonym for the fine people of Seattle.)