Two Discoveries: Brandon Donnelly and Google Timelapse

Michael Geller just recommended a blog by Brandon Donnelly – “Rated by the Guardian Cities UK as one of the best city blogs in the world, it generally covers everything from architecture and planning to real estate and technology.”

I’m surprised I hadn’t seen more references to him before (a Canadian blogger on cities!). “Brandon Graham Donnelly is a city builder and blogger based in Toronto … studied architecture and fine art history at the University of Toronto … a Managing Director at Slate Asset Management and founder of the Globizen Group . … loves snowboarding, photography, electronic music, and local Ontario wines.”

First post I saw:

Just how valuable is public transit?

Benjamin Dachis and Rhys Godin of the C.D. Howe Institute have a new report out talking about the effect of COVID-19 on the future of public transit in Canadian cities. In it, they make the argument that public transit is a key enabler of the agglomeration economies that make cities so valuable. And right now, most people aren’t using it.

Better yet, he adds a video and link to a feature by Google (similar to that little clock on Streetview Google Maps) – a timelapse function on Google Earth that covers the planet – and now in 3D:

Google Earth has a feature called Timelapse that combines millions of different satellite images to show you how the world has changed over the last 37 years — sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. It’s a feature that’s been out for a few years, but they just made it available in 3D. So here’s an overly wondrous video showing off the new feature, and here is a dedicated site that allows you to quickly try out Timelapse in 2D.