Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 858

This recent NY Times article about crowd estimates for Hong Kong's annual pro-democracy protest is a good follow-up to my post about the number of people who, allegedly, showed up to last month's NBA Championship parade here in Toronto.

For years, Hong Kong has been seeing divergent estimates for its annual protest . Organizers typically overstate. And the police typically understate. This year, organizers claimed 550,000 people in attendance, whereas the police claimed only 190,000.

The difference this year is that a local tech company has started using AI software (loaded up onto iPads) to help supplement the standard practice manual counts. This year they concluded -- perhaps more definitively -- that 265,000 people protested in the streets of Hong Kong.

Image: NY Times

I have a large, and growing, stack of books sitting beside my bed. It is a symptom of my interest in reading exceeding my actual capacity to read, given all the other things I'm doing. However, summer is a good time to get caught up and over the long weekend I did finish reading, The Global Edge: Miami in the Twenty-First Century . It was great, and so now I can confidently recommend it to all of you.

The most interesting storyline for me was the leading role that " pre-Mariel " Cubans (more on this below) played in transforming Miami from a winter destination to an emerging global city. According to 2015 figures, the City of Miami's population is 70% Hispanic, of which 34% are Cuban. About 70% of the city's population speaks Spanish at home. And only about 11.9% of the population is white (non-Hispanic).

But the bit that really intrigued me was the distinction that Alejandro Portes and Aerial C. Armony make between the "pre-Mariel" Cubans who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s -- many of whom became successful entrepreneurs -- and the " Marielitos " who arrived in the 1980s onward. This latter group has, on average, not seen the same kind of financial successes as its predecessors.

The other thing that I think many of you will appreciate is that the authors recognize that all urban phenomena are inherently spatial. And so almost everything they discuss is described in terms of its physical manifestation within the city. Perhaps the most stark is the region's growing inequality. Wealth along the water; poverty inland.

Here's some more information on the book if you're interested.

Photo by  Alejandro Luengo  on  Unsplash

Bill Gates recently spoke with David Rubenstein at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. Full video, here .

The bit that got a lot of attention is his admission that Microsoft should have dominated in mobile (in lieu of Android). The core competencies were all there and the company was in investing in mobile at the time.

The technology discussions in general are interesting, but I also really enjoyed hearing about his efforts to address climate change. He spends a good chunk of time talking about that. Strongly recommend. (Related link: Breakthrough Energy .)

On a somewhat unrelated note, this is also the first time I've seen every question and answer neatly transcribed below a video. This makes it very easy to find the parts that may be of interest. All video discussions should have this.