Global Resources and Promising Practices for Building and Refining Accessible and Inclusive Smart Cities from Darren Bates LLC.
Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff at CityLab Detroit Sidewalk Labs is building a prototype for the urban future on Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront. This project asks us to re-think relationships between governments, the private sector, and residents. Dan Doctoroff, Founder and CEO, Sidewalk Labs joins Jennifer Bradley, The Aspen Institute at CityLab Detroit. Timed Transcript: Please see video option. Transcript: (Archived…
Read More
Watch the Video! In our third public talk, author and community organizer Jane Farrow will moderate a conversation with three accessibility experts who are challenging cities to incorporate principles for inclusive design and ensure accessibility for all: Luke Anderson – Founder & Executive Director – StopGap Foundation; Consultant – AccessAbility Advantage Darren Bates – Founder – Smart Cities Library™;…
Read More
article-context-nav context-nav article article-hero-lede article-hero article-contents post-contents On the Sidewalk Labs website is a 200-page document explaining its vision for a smart neighborhood in Toronto. It’s packed with illustrations that show a warm, idyllic community full of grassy parks, modular buildings and underground tunnels with delivery robots and internet cabling inside. The text describes “a truly complete community” that’s free…
Read More
The only way to make the neighborhood of the future a more sustainable, livable, and equitable place is by hearing from Torontonians of all backgrounds and perspectives. That’s why we couldn’t be more excited that more than 1,000 people have said they’ll attend the first Sidewalk Toronto public roundtable next Tuesday, March 20. To help us hear from everyone, we’ve…
Read More
Sidewalk Toronto is a joint effort by Waterfront Toronto and Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs to create a new kind of mixed-use, complete community on Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront, beginning with the creation of Quayside. Sidewalk Toronto will combine forward-thinking urban design and new digital technology to create people-centered neighborhoods that achieve precedent-setting levels of sustainability, affordability, mobility, and economic opportunity. Transcript ________________…
Read More
close story-meta TORONTO — For a city striving to become a major technology center, it was a prize catch: A Google corporate sibling would spend the coming year planning a futuristic metropolis in a derelict part of Toronto’s waterfront. When announcing this fall that the company, Sidewalk Labs, would create a city of tomorrow, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada…
Read More
There is a lot of interest in the project, both locally and globally, and many questions about how it will unfold. As a lead-up tool for the November 1 public meeting, Torontoist and friends have organized a starting draft list of questions and concerns, collected from a range of contributors and viewpoints. There are undoubtedly perspectives and questions missing here,…
Read More
The nascent plans for a smart neighbourhood on Toronto’s eastern waterfront may sound exciting from an urban-planning perspective, but the high-tech project poses fundamental governance problems that we need to solve now.
Smart cities are largely an invention of the private sector – an effort to create a market within government. They offer tech companies opportunities to generate profits by assuming functions traditionally carried out by the public sector and by selling cities technologies they may or may not need. The business opportunities are clear. The risks inherent to residents, less so….
Read More
Google has built an online empire by measuring everything. Clicks. GPS coordinates. Visits. Traffic. The company’s resource is bits of info on you, which it mines, packages, repackages, repackages again, and then uses to sell you stuff. Now it’s taking that data-driven world-building power to the real world. Google is building a city.
Tuesday afternoon, public officials gathered in Toronto to announce that Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary under the Alphabet umbrella that also houses Google, will pilot the redevelopment of 12 acres of southeastern waterfront. Today the area hosts a few industrial buildings and some parking lots. In just a few years, it will be a techified community going by the name of Quayside. Sidewalk Labs has already devoted $50 million to the project, and Google will move its Toronto headquarters to the neighborhood. Once the company has proven out its concept, it plans to expand its redevelopment to the entire 800-acre waterfront area.
Read More
The partnership between a U.S. urban-innovation lab and a government agency could bring a bold experiment in city-building and high-tech to Toronto, Alex Bozikovic explains More below • An illustrated primer on how Sidewalk Toronto would work An artist’s illustration shows Sidewalk Labs’s Quayside redevelopment of the Toronto waterfront. ILLUSTRATIONS COURTESY OF sidewalk labs Published October 17, 2017Updated November 12, 2017 A unit of…
Read More
OP-ED in Reply To: “Reimagining cities from the internet up” by Daniel L. Doctoroff Dear Daniel L. Doctoroff, Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! I applaud and appreciate your efforts and the efforts of your team at Sidewalk Labs for demonstrating the importance of listening, learning, and putting all people first. Like yourself, I understand the urban public realm and am eager to see…
Read More
Many have attempted, and failed, to integrate technology into urban planning. and now Sidewalk Labs is trying it again in Toronto. tml-version=”Sidewalk Labs, the urban innovation start-up owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, has announced a partnership with the City of Toronto to develop a new waterfront precinct. Time to ask Google: Can you build a city? The Quayside precinct,…
Read More
A unit of Google’s parent company, devoted to urban innovation, has signed a deal to map out a new kind of neighbourhood on Toronto’s waterfront that could demonstrate how data-driven technology can improve the quality of city life. This is the first such project for Alphabet, and for Sidewalk Labs. If the initiative proceeds, it would include at least 3.3 million square feet of residential, office and commercial space, including a new headquarters for Google Canada, in a district that would be a test bed for the combination of technology and urbanism
Read More
Sidewalk Labs responded to an open call for a proposal for the redevelopment of Quayside, brownfield land around Toronto’s old port. This call was issued by Waterfront Toronto – a public controlled urban development agency that aspires “to explore new ideas, new innovations, new partnerships that if successful could apply to the rest of Toronto, other cities in Canada and…
Read More
Google is continuing its expansion into every corner of human life. The search giant today announced the creation of Sidewalk Labs, a new and independent company that Google CEO Larry Page says will focus on improving city living for everyone by developing new technologies to deal with urban issues like cost of living, transportation, and energy usage. The new company, based…
Read More