Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 968

This morning I came across two news item that are interesting in their own right, but also have a noteworthy relationship.

$AAPL now has a market cap that exceeds $1 trillion. And not surprisingly, everyone, from the New York Times to  Bloomberg (photo essay), is talking about it.

But the one thing that continues to stand out for me about this story is what Steve Jobs said back in 2011 when he unveiled iPad 2.

He said that fundamental to Apple’s DNA is its ability to marry technology with the liberal arts and the humanities. Its secret sauce is not technology alone .

Now let’s move on to the second piece of news that caught my attention.

As of 2017, less than 5% of college and university students in the US were studying one of the big four humanities majors – a sharp cliff-like drop from 2011 according to this data .

That’s almost certainly because business degrees and STEM degrees are thought to be more valuable and in demand in the labor market. And I’m sure they are right out of school.

But perhaps we shouldn’t forget Apple’s trillion dollar lesson. And I think this goes for both the tech space and the real estate industry, as well as others.

We switched coasts today. Here is a photo of our Miami Beach hotel taken from the boardwalk with my iPhone:

And here is the after:

I took it into Lightroom. Fixed the alignment of the building. Whitened it, but brought out the beautiful warm sunset light on the north elevation. And I took the greenery in the foreground out of the shadows.

The balconies remind me of one of Donald Judd’s “Untitled” pieces . He was one of my favorite artists. I also like the one dude leaning over that upper balcony. It gives the photo a tranquil feel, which is not usually how one would describe Miami Beach.

I am reading up on a few different things this morning.

Southwest Florida, which is where I am right now, is in the midst of a “ red tide ” that began last November. These happen fairly regularly along the Gulf Coast, but this one is high up on the severity scale. There doesn’t appear to be a clear explanation for what causes them, but sustained warmer temperatures and fertilizer and other pollutant runoff are thought to stoke it. Whatever the cause, they are devastating  to the environment. We are switching coasts tomorrow morning.

Portland now has electric scooters. (Why don’t we have these in Toronto?) But to combat possible concerns around urban clutter, the company, Bird, has committed to collecting all of its scooters each night and has agreed to remit $1 per scooter per day to the city. These scooters are pissing off some cities (or maybe it’s just San Francisco), but I still believe the problem will eventually get resolved. City Observatory also has this interesting piece where it compares the above scooter pricing to car pricing. Are we underpricing cars?

Finally, here is  a short film on civic security in Paris . In an effort to mitigate terrorism, the city has, of course, been implementing and erecting fencing, barricades and other reactive security measures. But sadly, now that this has become a new reality, the capital is spending more time considering how these measures could be more thoughtfully designed. The video showcases some of them. Certainly a more deliberate approach, but are they just as reactive?

Maybe one of these topics will be of interest to you too.

Photo by Andreas Selter on Unsplash