Sidewalk Labs Quayside project

[johnnyhamont]

Sidewalk releases grand vision for controversial Toronto development
By Ian Bickis The Canadian Press
Mon., June 24, 2019



TORONTO - Sidewalk Labs laid out its ambitious vision of the future of cities with its plan for Toronto’s eastern waterfront, but has already received fresh criticism for its potential overreach.

The plan sets out what Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google parent-company Alphabet Inc., hopes will be a blueprint for urban development that will incorporate the latest concepts in building design, mobility, sustainability and inclusivity.

It hopes to achieve nothing less than to improve everything about how people work and live, Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff said at a media presentation Monday.

“Our proposal aims to do something extraordinary on Toronto’s eastern waterfront — create a new model of inclusive growth, where cutting-edge technology and forward-thinking urban design combine to achieve an ambitious improvement in every aspect of the way we live.”

Sidewalk’s proposal sets out detailed plans for a residential-focused 4.8-hectare Quayside site, but also goes much farther to envision the foundations of a 77-hectare eastern waterfront district along similar design ideals.

Full article here

[johnnyhamont]

Google affiliate Sidewalk Labs abandons Toronto smart-city project

Google affiliate Sidewalk Labs is walking away from building a smart-city development in Toronto after two and a half years of controversy over its origins, overreach, and privacy and financial implications.

The Alphabet Inc. subsidiary won the right to plan a community called Quayside on the downtown Toronto lakeshore in 2017, hoping to build a 12-acre neighbourhood “from the internet up.” In partnership with the tripartite government agency Waterfront Toronto, the New York urban-planning firm imagined a place filled with new technologies such as heated sidewalks, robotic garbage systems, and, crucially, sensors to learn about how people move about cities in ways that could inspire even more innovations.

But the project faced frequent delays and a constant flurry of criticisms from a group of unlikely allies. Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford lambasted the project’s value to taxpayers on the same day as progressive activists raised concerns about governance and surveillance implications. Tech billionaire Jim Balsillie criticized Sidewalk for compromising the future of Canadian innovation, arguing it would divert new intellectual property and the wealth it would create to Alphabet.

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