- Harbinger of a shift in automobile retailing and of the future of malls? With Tesla and car-sharing challenging what owning a car means, the traditional car manufacturers have had to get creative. In the latest – Mercedes is opening up “Mercedes me” stores in malls around Canada.
- Speaking of redefining retail – Apple announced it is going to start referring to stores as “Town Squares” in an effort to turn their commercial locations into broader gathering places and “communities.”
- Japan is bringing self-driving buses to its rural areas to help seniors move around.
- Bloomberg short-lists the likely locations for Amazon’s HQ2 to six cities, with the caveat: “five could be eliminated by politics” (spoiler: five of the six cities are in the US, the sixth is Toronto). It’s a compelling argument considering Toronto actually meets the qualifications easily, though I’m not sure how Toronto’s incentives stack up against those of US cities. An interesting counter-argument was proposed by City Lab: how will Amazon employees deal with Ontario’s foreign-buyer’s tax? I don’t foresee this as a major issue, though, as a bigger chunk of that 50,000 workforce would be Canadian.
- Vikram Pandit (former CEO of Citigroup) predicts technology will erase 30% of banking jobs over the next 5 years. That’s a very aggressive forecast, but with advancements in machine learning and Fintech continuing at their current (very rapid) pace, I could see this within the next 10, perhaps?
- Meanwhile, tech companies are happy to pay premium rents in order to be closer to talent, upending traditional notions of lower-rent seeking as costs of labour for technology and professional services continue to grow as a share of operating costs.
- Urban development animations are always fun to watch. Here’s cities in Brazil since 1500.
Musings on Metropolises 