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Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs will develop a futuristic, billion-dollar community along a sizable swathe of Toronto's waterfront.
On Wednesday, the City of Toronto and Sidewalk Labs — which is the urban innovation arm of Google's parent company Alphabet — announced a partnership to radically re-imagine 800 acres of the city's largely vacant, post-industrial Eastern Waterfront, and turn it into a tech-integrated neighborhood called Quayside.
SEE ALSO:Balloons may be Puerto Rico's best chance for communicationSidewalk Labs released a 196-page document brimming with the company's extensive ideas, including high-speed ferries, parks that can be adapted to the seasons, and robotic waste removal vehicles.
Sidewalk Lab's plan to fuse smart urban planning with technology is still just a visionary document, but if realized, would likely benefit both the company and Toronto. Sidewalk Labs doesn't get any ownership of the neighborhood, but gets a massive slab of land to deploy its innovative urban experiment. Meanwhile, Toronto will at minimum get a lot of help transforming an apparently neglected area of its waterfront into livable, revitalized land.
Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, seems to like this idea.
"The new technologies that emerge from the Quayside have the potential to improve city living — making housing more affordable and public transit more convenient for Canadians and their families," Trudeau said in a statement.
The company offered ideas about what the urban experiment might look like. These aren't just attractive conceptual drawings, but based upon real-life examples of urban renewal. As shown in the images below, Sidewalk Labs shows the transformation of a dreary-looking Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn into a bustling and desirable community — which, it should be noted, the two-year old company was not responsible for.
Williamsburg before urban renewal.Credit: alex garvin
Williamsburg after renewal.Credit: Joe WooldheadWhat renewed Williamsburg lacks, however, is a deep tech infusion into its urban space. For Quayside, Sidewalk Labs plans to fill the community with a diversity of sensors and cameras to collect information about pedestrian and vehicle flows, pollution, and the condition of infrastructure.
This brings to mind blatant privacy issues, but in its document, Sidewalk Labs acknowledges this concern. To temper these worries, the company claims it would only transmit "metrics," as opposed to actual video footage.
Other futuristic ideas include self-driving taxi bots, which can be hailed by an app. The company also suggested self-driving buses.
There's a lot can that can be done on 800 acres of mostly undeveloped land, but Sidewalk Labs is seeking Toronto's input before embarking on its techno-futuristic plans. The company's first town hall event with the Toronto community will be held on Nov. 1. Community members may give a thumbs up for subterranean robotic trash transport, but a thumbs down on data-collecting cameras.
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