Sidewalk Labs, owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is to build a digital city in Toronto. It will have fast wi-fi, many sensors, sustainable energy and autonomous cars.
We couldn't be more excited to undertake this partnership with Torontonians. #SidewalkTO starts with your ideas https://t.co/DOeoajwBvO
— Sidewalk Labs (@sidewalklabs) October 17, 2017
The project is in Quayside.
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-centred neighbourhoods that achieve precedent-setting levels of sustainability, affordability, mobility, and economic opportunity.
Google will move its Canadian headquarters to the redeveloped area, and Sidewalk Labs has committed $50m (£37m) to kick off the project.
Sidewalk Labs has already started smart projects in other cities. It plans to provide fast wi-fi across New York, using old payphones.
City of the future: no more private car ownership. Designed for *people* to thrive, instead. Coming to our waterfront via @sidewalklabs. pic.twitter.com/1wDSqxSFr3
— jennifer keesmaat (@jen_keesmaat) October 18, 2017
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Nothing special about sustainable energy in Ontario, at least for the electricity supply.
https://www.electricitymap.org/?lang=en&wind=false&solar=false&page=country&countryCode=CA-ON
You can see it is almost all low carbon, mainly nuclear & hydroelectric.
I guess they’re trying to create these “Silicon Valley” type of ecosystems or communities, where they can attract the creative nerds (so that the rest of us can ride their coattails and benefit from their inventions). Just replace sports bars with nerd bars featuring talks on EMdrive and BFR, and the nerds will come running. (“And Friday night is Star Trek Night! Klingons get in free!”)
Nobody lets the new Klingons in for free. New Klingons look like a Snickers candy bar.
It’s like… ummm… an experimental… prototype… community… of tomorrow!
so now google is a real estate developer too. There reaching a bit from the internet to the concrete.
IF you are wondering if you want to watch the video let me help you, got about four minutes you wish you could lose? It’s all about marketing and using the google newness cloak to create pretty much what you would expect of a new development on prime property.
Wow they will have fast wifi. Talk about raising the bar.