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Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

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Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#251

Post by marris »

CPLX wrote: post #194
zaidf wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your questions are valid. But you could pick holes about any party trying to bring about change, right? For example, you say "let's be real here: Google doesn't exist to make the world a better place"...my question to you is, which org does exist purely to make the world a better place? And moreover, how are those orgs doing in terms of impact and scale?

Democratically elected governments exist to make the world a better place, at least in the views of those who vote in their leaders. Businesses exist to make money. That's the distinction being drawn. Pretending there's not a fundamental distinction between the two types of entities is disingenuous.

If you start from "democratically elected governments exist to make the world a better place," then you're going to end up somewhere wrong. Even in the best of times, democratically elected governments exist to give the majority power over the minority. This is considered an improvement over other forms of government, where often a minority had power over a majority and treated them poorly.

There are actually some "fundamental distinctions" between government and business. For example, most governments (democratic or not) are slow, monolithic, and effectively immortal. Since governments have tax and police authority, they can survive bad periods, including those caused by their own errors, for longer periods of time. Most businesses do not have tax and police authority and must face the market test on a daily basis. The businesses that fail the test typically die and new businesses replace them.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#252

Post by jeromegv »

tyre wrote: post #33
toomuchtodo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still advocate for such urban redevelopment and community planning without Big Tech behind it.

You can but change is measured in decades and even then often doesn't happen. Starting "fresh" with a single leading implementer is really how it needs to be done. Take San Francisco. There's the planning board, the planning department, environmental lawsuits, HOAs, abusing "historic landmarks" designations, political showmanship, developers, affordable housing, community meetings, unions, community groups (the cycli…

It's still managed by Waterfront Toronto, the goal is still for it to be pre-planned in a smart way. However, I didn't see much in Sidewalk Labs that was so innovative. You talk of "without prioritizing road" but there was still zero dollar allocated for any kind of transit project, 2.5 years into it. Not that it's all Google's fault, but really for me lack of concrete plans for transit in development showed me it wasn't serious.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#253

Post by Tsarbomb »

rising-sky wrote: post #245
nostromo wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> got shut down by the locals That's not what happened though. Google was free to continue the project but decided not too, using Covid-19 as a fig leaf. I agree with the thrust of your comment (we need more experimentation with cities, not less) but this is Google doing what Google does: changing it's mind and abandoning projects.

Hard to say that wasn't a factor in shutting it down. After several missed deadlines, major controversies around trust and privacy, scope creep such as attempts by Sidewalk Labs to alter to the project scope, for example, redevelopment of 350 acres in the Port Lands area which was nearly 30 times the original proposal, withdrawal of key advisors, and proposals that were simply political explosive, etc. It seemed almo…

How can you say it was going to be a shadow of its original goals if was unable to scope creep.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#254

Post by jeromegv »

brummm wrote: post #146
nick_ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand "high density" to mean condo neighbourhoods. I understand medium density to mean mid-rise, walk-ups, or town houses. The situation in Toronto is (and has been for some time) a stark contrast between low-density neighbourhoods of houses & small duplexes/triplexes, and high-density pockets of high-rise condos. This is bad for all the usual reasons of neighbourhood segregation.

I absolutely agree. Toronto has either single family homes (low density) or high rise condos (high density), but the medium density part is absolutely missing and it has a pretty negative effect on Toronto, I feel.

That's the issue. I'm all for condos in Toronto but the issue is lack of medium density, you either own your home and your lawn in the middle of downtown (which is now a multi-million dollar home) or you live in a condo tower of 30 floors. No in-between.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#255

Post by gonehome »

drusepth wrote: post #118

I know there's gonna be a lot of people here that are happy about this for various reasons (anti-Google, anti-"smart cities", etc), but this is really disappointing for me. It's true that the concept of "cities" (or even just "gatherings of people") predates the Internet by thousands of years, and that cities themselves haven't adapted much to the Internet and what it enables in the 40ish years it's been around. This…

There's a YC startup called Culdesac I've been following that's doing something interesting around city design.

I'm not sure 'smart city' would be the right phrase for it, but they seem pretty cool.

https://culdesac.com/

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#256

Post by jeromegv »

sudosysgen wrote: post #183
WalterBright wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If demand increases faster than supply increases, then prices go up. It does not mean supply&demand theory is invalid.

So, demand and supply has increased dramatically in almost every single city in the world, and in almost no cities has supply outpaced demand? The world is not an economics 101 textbook. In Canada for example, the only province with functional and affordable housing is the one that enacted serious rent control and public housing, and they didn't have to build a lot. Seems to me that supply and demand isn't the whole…

Toronto (as a region) is getting about 100 000 new residents every year. It's hard to say that supply and demand isn't working because really, there is SO MUCH DEMAND, supply can hardly catchup. Montreal still has a decent cost of living for housing and guess what, that's because their demand is lower (harder for non-French speaking people to establish themselves there)

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#257

Post by fudged71 »

neom wrote: post #101
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you still exist?!

https://municipal.systems/ :)

This is a slick website!!

I wanted to filter the waze data and ran into a problem. I was trying to filter anything that wasn't a weather hazard and wasn't before 2020. Any combination of filters and orders I tried brought up some results from those exclusions.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#258

Post by jeromegv »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #96
aljg wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that would be patently absurd. Of course they're vacating (the upper end of) mid-priced housing. It's almost as if an equivalent amount of mid-priced housing would suddenly become available. I wonder who you think would move into that? Build up .

You don’t reckon landlords of those upper-end mid-priced dwellings are asking more for rent every time a lease ends and a new one starts? Because that does seem to be what’s happened in many cities. One issue here is ideological: is housing a universal right, or is housing a capital good to be accumulated and regulated to be artificially scarce?

Landlords charge more because people are still showing up to the open-house to rent. So of course they would increase rent. What you're describing is supply and demand. We lack supply. You can be sure the rent would go lower if nobody was at the door asking to rent their place. In fact, that's exactly what's happening right now with rent price in Toronto. Immigration is slowed, airbnbs visitors are gone and supply is up. Price are going down.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#259

Post by jeromegv »

CaveTech wrote: post #51
sudosysgen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Condos are too expensive in general to fulfill the needs of most cities. In general construction of new condos is focused on the luxury kind of condos Google was undoubtedly looking at, which are absolutely not what cities need right now. We need affordable housing.

I'm not sure if either are you Canadian/Toronto residents, but Toronto has been developing a metric fuckton of condos over the last decade. In my neighbourhood alone (a 3x4 block area) there's been 15 30+ story condos built in that timeframe. We have no problems with condo development, imo.

It's irrelevant if that amount of condo is still not enough compared to the demand caused by 100 000 new residents moving into the region every year. Tech jobs are up. Airbnbs are up (as of before COVID). Supply is low. There are people lining up for renting apartments. It's a lack of supply.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#260

Post by andrekandre »

zaidf wrote: post #225
save_ferris wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which org does exist purely to make the world a better place? I think the idea that one organization existing to make the entire world a better place is utopian, but governments are much better equipped to bring positive change than private companies are because citizens are the direct beneficiaries of government resources. For example, a municipal government’s purpose is to administer public services, and a munici…

I could not disagree with you more. Are you in the Bay Area? The Bay Area avoided a calamity primarily because of private companies taking action long before the city and state. I'd counter that if private companies were completely left in charge, the response may have been better (I would not have said this in January). Private companies were called in because our public efforts failed. If private companies were lea…

> Private companies were called in because our public efforts failed.

in the u.s, how about other countries?

it seems like, uniquely among first-world countries, the u.s the govt (local or otherwise) is pretty inept at a lot of things (especially now)...

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