Even as commuting to the office and going to school plunged at the height of COVID lockdowns, outdoor recreation, and cycling in particular, surged in country after country as people looked to escape isolation in a relatively safe way. In response, cities worldwide have developed bikeways with new urgency since 2020.

The question is whether people stick with their new cycling habit in these closer-to-normal times.

On Friday, Bike to Work Day in the U.S., the automatic counters that record each passing cyclist in many cities will get the latest numbers.

So far the evidence is incomplete and varies by place. But the numbers suggest that if they build it, people will come.

Case studies led by global urban planning researchers Ralph Buehler of Virginia Tech and John Bucher of Rutgers University track what more than a dozen cities have done in recent decades, and specifically during the pandemic, to improve pedal-powered commutes and recreation.

Already a world leader in bicycle friendliness, Montreal did more than any other North American city studied to expand safe cycling in the pandemic. London, Paris and Brussels did the most in Europe. But many more cities worldwide also seized opportunity in the crisis.

A big paradigm shift in thinking is going on, Buehler said in an interview. In transport planning and policy and engineering, we have promoted driving for nearly 100 years. We have made driving fast, weve made it convenient.

Now all of these cities and places are taking some of the space back. And giving it to bikes.

Some steps have phased out as the virus has faded, like many of the temporary pop-up bike lanes that appeared as if overnight. But many have stuck, thanks to an increase in lanes with permanent barriers against traffic, central arteries where cars cant go, and other concessions to a pent-up demand to get around without gas.

Environmental concerns have also been a motivation for many people to ditch cars for bikes, a choice that researchers say has clear benefits in reducing the carbon emissions that drive global warming and in curbing pollution broadly.

Here are snapshots of what some of the most ambitious pro-cycling cities on three continents have done for cycling before and during the pandemic. The findings are drawn principally from the MIT-published book Cycling through the COVID-19 Pandemic to a More Sustainable Transport Future, by Buehler, chair of urban affairs at Virginia Tech, and Pucher, professor emeritus at Rutgers School of Planning and Public Policy:

WASHINGTON

In 2001, the U.S. capital offered cyclists a meager 3 miles (5 kilometers) of bicycle lanes, unprotected. By 2019, the network topped 100 miles, and bicycling as a share of all travel in the city increased fivefold. In 2020 and 2021, the city picked up the pace even more, building nearly 20 miles (32 km) of protected lanes, much safer than merely marked lanes on streets shared with cars.

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MONTREAL

An innovator in urban biking since the late 1980s, Montreal was the first large North American city to develop an extensive network of physically separated on-street bicycle lanes, the book says. It was also first to introduce a large-scale bike-sharing system, with its BIXI bikes in 2009.

In the five years before the pandemic, Montreals cycling network grew by 34%, topping 1,000 km (600 miles). Almost a third of that is made up of off-street paths and much of the rest is safely separated on shared roads.

The citys pro-biking mayor, Valérie Plante, easily won reelection in 2021 on a platform of green initiatives. Underway is a major expansion of a new express bikeway network, Réseau Express Vélo or REV, that would double the citys already sweeping cycling network in four years.

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AUSTIN, Texas

Considered the most pro-cycling large city in the U.S. South, Austin doubled its network of protected on-street bike lanes to around 60 miles (97 km) in the first two years of COVID. From 2010 to 2019, the city had tripled its network of conventional on-street bicycle lanes, to nearly 300 miles (480 km).

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BOGOTA, Colombia

Bogota is a breakout success. By some measures, over 9% of trips in the capital are by bicycle, putting it in the top tier globally and a model that other cities in Latin America are trying to emulate.

Thats according to a study published before the onset of COVID-19 by Bogota civil engineers Daniel Rosas-Satizábal and Alvaro Rodriguez-Valencia. They attribute a remarkable increase in bike ridership to mayoral leadership, advocacy groups and a latent bicycle culture that emerged when officials put money into making streets safer.

When the pandemic broke out, Mayor Claudia Lopez turned traffic lanes over to bicycles, among other steps, adding 85 km (53 miles) to the citys network of bike paths.

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WESTERN EUROPE

Paris saw cycling spike 60% in 2020-2021. Seen a quarter century ago as bicycle-unfriendly, the city has since taken striking measures to get people on wheels, even subsidizing one third of the cost for people to buy 85,000 electric bikes or cargo bikes from 2009 to 2022. Cars were banned or relegated to single lanes on certain roads along the Seine River through the center of Paris.

London more than doubled its protected bike lanes when the virus bore in, bringing the total to 260 km (160 miles) in a year. This, after tripling their length in the decade before. Bucher and Buehler say the pandemic brought about the most rapid transformation of the streetscape in Greater London in decades, resulting in a sharp rise in both walking and cycling.

Back in 1998, 10% of trips in Berlin were by bicycle a share many cities can only dream about even now. By 2018, that had grown to 18%. Thats in part because of Berlins configuration as a city of many neighborhood centers, with more people living close to where they work and shop. Early in the pandemic, city officials expedited a plan creating more bicycle lanes to meet demand.

In Brussels, cycling jumped 22% in 2020, then declined in 2021 but was still 14% higher than in 2019. That suggests that some people who took up biking when COVID arrived gave it up but more stayed with it. The city plowed 74% more money into cycling in 2020-21.

Brussels seems committed to making things more difficult for cars in the core. It plans to eliminate 65,000 parking spaces for cars by 2030, and is reconfiguring central streets to reserve the most direct routes for cyclists and public transit.

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NEW YORK

The city built over 60 miles (100 km) of protected bike lanes from 2019 to 2022, usually connecting them to protected intersections, and a larger number of regular bike lanes. Docking stations for CitiBike bike-sharing exceeded 1,500 in mid-2022, up from 860 in 2019.

During COVIDs peak in 2020, over 80 miles (130 km) of mostly neighborhood streets were closed to motor vehicles altogether during certain hours; thats since been pulled back to 20 miles (32 km).

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MINNEAPOLIS

From 2000 to 2017, Minneapolis bikeways more than doubled in length, cycling tripled and the share of cyclists who suffered severe injury or death plunged by nearly 80%, a not uncommon development in cities that aggressively expanded their networks. In the pandemics first month, the city announced it would quickly add 15 miles (24 km) of bike routes, closing many roads to traffic except for neighborhood residents.

Along with Montreal, Quebec City and select other cities in northern climes, Minneapolis is also big on bicycling through brutal winters. Researchers place Minneapolis with Denver and Chicago as mid-America standouts in advancing safer cycling.

We are a platform for all kinds of content creators, Amrapali Gan said at Fortunes 2023 Most Powerful Women Next Gen summit Wednesday. Gan was the companys chief marketing and communications officer until she got the CEO job in December of 2021at the ripe of 36. 

Since then, shes tried to broaden the public perception of OnlyFans with a consistent not-so-racy narrativeshe spoke with Fortune back in January about her goals to rebrand the subscription social media platform that has become known for its adult content. Its a balance of maintaining it as a space that empowers adult content creators but also has room for everyone from chefs to race car drivers.

The platform is for anyone who has a community and wants to create a community and also to be able to engage with them without the distractions that you will find elsewhere, she said at the summit, explaining that OnlyFans has no ads or algorithms. Its truly about the creator and fan connection.

The cultural zeitgeist that stemmed from the companys mention in Megan Thee Stallion and Beyonces Savage Remix (It goes: On that demon time, she might start a OnlyFans) verse helped the platform garner mainstream attention for its spicy content, Gan said, but there are other non-spicy offerings like comedian Whitney Cummings OnlyFans TV show.

Of course, these talking points are likely a factor of knowing her audience. When moderator and Fortunes Polina Pompliano asked the 200-person audience who had an OnlyFans, not one person raised their hand. 

The OnlyFans team has remained relatively close-lipped about their finances, porn/non-porn content breakdown, and leadership dynamics.

What the company did share for Fortunes profile seems to show that the platform is more than a flash in the pan. It earned $932 million in revenue in 2021, up 160% from 2020. Of that revenue, $324.7 million was after-tax profit, a 575% leap. 

The revenue model works by taking a 20% cut from creator subscriptions. In 2021, two million-plus creators took in nearly $4 billion in earnings from 188 million users. The company has paid out $10 billion to its creators over its six-year lifetime.

While Gan underscores the simplicity and success of this revenue split with creators, she is open to new opportunities. Ive always wanted to be looking at what else is out there to connect with our community, said Gan at the Summit.

Researchers Tom Parsons, Pei-Chin Wu, Meng Matt Wei and Steven DHondt set out to calculate the mass of all buildings in New York City while modeling the subsidence caused by the pressure they exert on the Earth and to show detailed images of the city literally sinking, scraped from satellite data. Their findings, published by the Earths Future journal, showed the city is already sinking 1mm to 2mm a year, and in some places more than that. The researchers add that the sea levels will likely rise by 200mm to 600mm by 2050, posing a greater threat to coastal cities and subsiding cities (cities that are already sinking), at a rate of four times higher than stable regions. Most cities around the world will sink as urban areas become denser, they projected. 

The tectonic weight of the skyscrapers weakens the soil of the bobbing Big Apple, as researchers find that the average building mass is around 1.55 million pounds, making the collective mass of the buildings studied 1.68 trillion pounds. And in the age of remote work, its a bit ironic, given that these structures are increasingly empty. In other words, New York could be sinking for nothing.

Like an evil rubber ducky

Since the pandemic began three years ago, more companies have been ushering employees back to their offices. But they largely havent had great success with this, as some turn a blind eye to mandates that dont adhere to their previous flexible ways of working. 

Most prominently, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, a dominant figure on Wall Street, called workers back, only to be met with a surge of complaints from employees. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon emerged as strongly team office last year, ordering everyone to come in full-time. A year later, Fortunes Geoff Colvin reported that many just havent shown up, and that attendance hovers at 65% to 69%, and almost zero on Fridays. Even when office attendance hit a post-pandemic high in February of this year, it remained only at 50.4%, according to data from nationwide security company Kastle Systems, which has emerged as the leading source on remote work vacancies. Facing an uphill battle, some CEOs have reversed course and allowed for hybrid work. It all puts into challenge the purposes of skyscrapers that were used to hoard employees under managers thumbs and are now boondoggles quite literally pressing Manhattan down into the sea. 

While some (Patagonia-vested) wildlife remains downtown and in Lower Manhattan, the area still isnt what it used to be, as Bloomberg reports that office vacancies in NYC reached a record low of 22.7% this year. The skylined ghost town doesnt seem to be stopping anytime soon, as real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield recently projected that almost 330 million square feet of US office spaces could become vacant by 2030 as a result of remote work.

Even if our skyscrapers stand unused, theyre still letting themselves be known to the bedrock of Manhattan. Like an evil rubber ducky, these skyscrapers might survive eventual flooding, but theyre a stressor that heightens the severity of issues in the future. But theres no need for paralyzing climate anxiety just yet, Its not something to panic about immediately but theres this ongoing process that increases the risk of inundation from flooding, Tom Parsons, a leader of said research and geophysicist told The Guardian. That being said, researchers note that theres a dangerous cocktail brewing, as the mix of tectonic and anthropogenic subsidence, sea level rise, and increasing hurricane intensity imply an accelerating problem along coastal and riverfront areas.

Even with some city-dwellers moving out to cheaper areas because of inflation, people are in general increasingly living in urban areas. Researchers point to a study from the United Nations to show that 70% of the worlds population will live in cities by 2050. This all means that more will be subjected to this environmental change and also likely lead to worsening it. Major cities on every continent except Antarctica are observed to be subsiding and the issue may be worsened as populations grow, conclude researchers. In a time where our skyscrapers dont serve us as much as the office buildings they used to stand in as, it might be time to do away with them altogether, as theyre certainly not helping the issue of climate change.

After 15 months of war, the allied nations are still aiming at new targets for financial penalties that block, freeze and seize access to international funds.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the newest sanctions will tighten the grip on Russian President Vladimir Putins ability to wage his barbaric invasion and will advance our global efforts to cut off Russian attempts to evade sanctions.

But there are limits to how much impact they can have.

A look at the sanctions dynamics:

Whats in the newest round?

The U.K imposed sanctions on 86 people and companies, including parties connected to the theft and resale of Ukrainian grain. It also banned the import of diamonds from Russia. The European Union, too, plans to restrict trade in Russian diamonds.

The U.S. hit individuals and organizations across 20 countries, focusing on people and firms helping the Kremlin evade existing sanctions to procure technology. The Commerce Department added 71 firms to its list, and the State Department put 200 people, firms and vessels on its blocked list.

Additionally, new U.S. reporting requirements were issued for people and firms that have any interest in Russian Central Bank assets. The purpose is to fully map holdings of Russias sovereign assets that will remain immobilized in G7 jurisdictions until Russia pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine, the Treasury Department said.

How effective have the sanctions been so far?

While the U.S. and other G7 nations have turned Russia into the most sanctioned country in the world, some foreign policy experts question the effectiveness of the financial penalties and point to Russias maneuvers to evade them and press its war effort.

Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Russia has demonstrated a remarkable degree of adaptability to Western sanctions.

She added that the war is relatively cheap for Russia to prosecute, amounting to up to an estimated 5% of GDP.

That is easily manageable for Russia in the next couple of years at least, and the cumulative effect of sanctions is just not strong enough to radically alter that, she said.

U.S. officials defend the effectiveness of the sanctions, and argue that they are not designed to work immediately.

Along with imposing individual sanctions, the U.S. and allies have frozen Russian Central Bank funds, restricted Russian banks access to SWIFT the dominant system for global financial transactions and imposed a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian oil and diesel.

The Treasury Department on Friday in a new progress report said the price cap has been successful in suppressing Russian oil revenues. It cited Russian Ministry of Finance data showing that the Kremlins oil revenues from January to March of this year were more than 40% lower than in the same period last year.

Despite widespread initial market skepticism around the price cap, market participants and geopolitical analysts have now acknowledged that the price cap is accomplishing both of its goals, the Treasury Department report.

Why are the U.S. and its allies still finding new targets?

Treasury officials say that as sanctions are imposed, Russian intelligence keeps looking for ways to get around them, requiring constant adjustments.

Newer sanction efforts have been dedicated to the evaders and the facilitators of evasion, who help Russia acquire supplies and technology.

We know the Kremlin is actively seeking ways to circumvent these sanctions, Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo said earlier this year.

One of the ways we know our sanctions are working is the Kremlin has tasked its intelligence services, such as the FSB and GRU, to find ways to get around them.

Among other things, U.S. officials say, Moscow has turned to North Korea and Iran to resupply the Russian military with drones and surface-to-surface missiles.

What more is there to sanction?

Treasury officials say future targets could include newly identified firms and people connected to supply chains that help Russia gain materials for the war, front companies that help Russia evade sanctions and rogue actors from North Korea and Iran.

For the past month, Treasury officials Brian Nelson and Liz Rosenberg have traveled across Europe and Central Asia to press countries that do business with the Kremlin to cut off financial ties because of the war on Ukraine.

They are also increasingly sharing intelligence between countries and firms to spot evasion.

There are also calls for the U.S. and allies to confiscate and transfer Russias central bank funds to Ukraine for the war effort.

The G7 countries must sustain and augment their efforts, including by confiscating frozen reserves of the Central Bank of Russia to help fund Ukraines reconstruction, said Jeffrey J. Schott, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.