Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 879

The word on the street is that Sonder -- the marketplace for vacation rentals and competitor to Airbnb -- is close to finalizing a $200 million investment round that would value the company at $1 billion.

I first wrote about Sonder back in 2016 after I met someone from their business development team here in Toronto. I have yet to stay in a Sonder, but I've looked at their rentals a few times.

One of the main differences between Sonder and Airbnb is that the former head leases their rental supply. And they do this by trying to go higher up on the food chain and partner with developers and real estate operators.

In this regard, they are similar to WeWork. And it allows them to sit somewhere in between Airbnb and a conventional hotel. The supply is distributed, but the service offering is more consistent.

Of course, this arguably makes their business model slower (they have to negotiate leases) and more costly (they're committing to fixed costs). So it becomes a question of: How valuable is that consistent service offering?

Lately when I travel, I've been trending more toward hotels, as opposed to Airbnb-like rentals. I like the experiences that many hotels are now focused on creating and I like knowing that if my flight arrives late (in a place like Brazil ), I'll be able to get into my room.

I guess consistency does matter.

Photo by  Spencer Watson  on  Unsplash

Photographer Michael Wolf died at his home in Hong Kong this week . He was 64. Even if you don't recognize the name, I am sure that many of you have seen his work. Perhaps his most famous project was "Architecture of Density", which had him documenting Hong Kong's extreme urban density from 2003 to 2014. Here is a photo (taken from his website ):

Michael was born in Germany, but grew up in Canada (he went to school in midtown Toronto) and in the United States. He eventually settled in Hong Kong and Paris -- both of which became muses for his work. Michael made a career out of documenting cities and the life that happens within them. If you aren't familiar with his work, I would encourage you to check it out here .

Photo: Michael Wolf

Since 2012, a team at New York University has been working on something called the Atlas of Urban Expansion . What they are doing is collecting and analyzing data related to the quantity and quality of urban growth around the world. Everything from population densities to how well the streets were laid out during each geographic expansion.

The Atlas defines a city as having at least 100,000 people, which is a commonly used benchmark. According to this definition, there were 4,245 cities on the planet as of 2010. Included in their study is a representative sample of 200 of them, all of which can be found here .

They are also, rightly, looking at each city in terms of its extrema tectorum -- the limits of its built-up area. This is as opposed to using administrative boundaries, which wouldn't be as relevant in a study like this.

I really like the animations that they created depicting urban growth from 1800 to 2014, because they show: (1) where each city started (the dark nucleus); (2) how different urban shapes emerge as a result of geography, transport, and other factors; and (3) how land consumptive many of our cities have become in recent years.

Image : Atlas of Urban Expansion