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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

#271

Post by [deleted] »

sudosysgen wrote: post #193
alexashka wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Units within condos are rented all the time. Your argument seems to be that there is a sizeable chunk of the population that cannot afford to own their own home. Yes, and? We live in a global market and as a result, citizens of successful cities have to compete with people not just from that city, but from people outside, who are willing to bring in some cash. Oops, that means a bunch of people now can't afford to ow…

If your idea is that the current system is so broken that there is nothing we can do to avoid 40% of the population in major production hubs to have to spend ridiculous fractions of their income on housing, with other that simply can't, then maybe indeed a refactor isn't enough, and we should start thinking about a complete rewrite. This isn't even a question of competition. Prices are increasing purely because the m…

[deleted]

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#272

Post by ehsankia »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #153
ehsankia wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Talk to Louisville, where Google put trenches in the roadways Yes, Louisville was indeed a failure. They tried something different to help speed up laying out lines, and it didn't work. All that is not really relevant to the comment above, which still is true regardless of the issue in Louisville. > Ignore the title, Google decided not to repair anything That's misleading, they decided to instead pay the city for t…

Originally they intended to repair the fiber lines and keep the network in Louisville, they decided to give the city money when they backed out so that the city could clean up the damage: Presumably by ripping up the fiber network entirely. Most of their other ideas were similarly discount. They bought fiber in places it was already run, and their issue with ISPs revolved around a push to demand the right to move AT&…

> the right to move AT&T's equipment around on AT&T's poles to make room for their own without supervision.

That makes it sound like Google was being pushy here, but in reality, ISPs were being intentionally as slow and obtrusive as possible to cripple Google's expansion, which is exactly why Fiber failed. If they were given X days to do something, they would do it on the (x-1)th day on purpose to waste Google's time and delay them as much as possible.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#274

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

netcan wrote: post #213
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…

I'd like us to be more forward looking, ambitious and experimental with our cities as well, especially in the west. But... I think there's an institutional aspect here that needs resolution before we can. The internet is worryingly centralised. A small number of extremely profitable companies monopolise huge markets. Google tends to do this with data. I think the reticence was justified: " Who owns the data? What kin…

I, for one, would like us to stop experimenting with re-inventing the wheel. We had functional cities for centuries now. We can make adjustments to match the century, but I do not think it is helpful to revamp the way we have lived until now to satisfy this odd new personality that pervades the web that needs to change UI every so often to feel relevant.

Geez. I feel old now.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#275

Post by ehsankia »

irieid9 wrote: post #221
ehsankia wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of those things require Google per se And it never did because it was never Google, it's Sidewalk Labs, which is a separate Alphabet company who's whole job is exactly to research and develop such plans. > Ultimately they require the community itself to take it upon themselves to do it I really dislike this argument. "We don't need AMP to make sites fast, webdevs can just spend time hand optimizing their sites…

Thank you for the banal correction of Google vs Alphabet And comparing website dev to community planning And ignoring the argument that communities are stuck focusing on profit generation which is acting as a block on their agency to collectively improve their communities Did you actually read the post or get stuck on the alphabet not google part and fill in the rest of the post with non sequitur? Food delivery exist…

> Food delivery existed before “tech companies”

Per-company delivery is not sustainable for anything else than Pizza and a few other fast food places. There was no centralized system like food deliveries. Also, not only is it keeping restaurants alive, it is also providing jobs to many drivers.

> You do know society existed before the year 2000, yes?

Yes, I remember having to pull out my paper map to go anywhere, having to go to video stores to get VHS tapes and not being able to go anywhere without a car. So much more freedom!

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#276

Post by alexashka »

jimmaswell wrote: post #217
alexashka wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you like stamping out single family homes? What is the benefit/cost ratio of 2-3 story houses vs 10 story housing vs 20 vs 30 vs 40? Houses are for families with kids right? What do kids want? Kids want other kids to play with. Kids want to attend classes and learn stuff. The more options a kid has, the better. Which area has more kids and therefore classes: low, medium or high density areas? I understand t…

some benefits off the top of my head: -More natural settings shown to improve mental health -"neighborliness" scales inversely with density to a point - less neighbors means you're more likely to get to know them, while with more people there are too many so the crowd of people gets depersonalized to a degree, because 50 neighbors are too many to keep track of. -you don't have to go to some crowded city park full of…

You've provided anecdotal benefits. You've neglected to mention the costs.

The benefit/cost ratio is what makes this conversation worth having.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#277

Post by DoreenMichele »

neom wrote: post #88

4 years ago I co-founded a smart cities business. Basically a wysiwyg schema/api generator for non-technical municipal users. Idea being if you're procuring data generative "stuff" - municipal workers can define an integration point. In the first few months of starting the company, I met with sidewalk labs at their request. We talked about working together and I said that wouldn't be possible because we wanted to giv…

I run r/CitizenPlanners which is a forum for folks who are doing community development work without being full-time paid government workers, basically. I'm looking over your site a bit and I'm wondering if this is anything potentially useful to part-time people of that sort, who may be low-level volunteers or who may run a small, local non-profit or be a part-time elected official.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Blog posts or points of entry you could point me to that might help me package this as useful info for my audience?

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#278

Post by ehsankia »

sandworm101 wrote: post #158
ehsankia wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just tax empty places, isn't that what Vancouver does? Leaving a place empty/inhabited should be very expensive.

>> Leaving a place empty/inhabited should be very expensive. Vancouver is finding that difficult to enforce. How do you tell if a unit is "occupied" or not? At the moment it is largely voluntary. The city cannot tell whether someone is living in a unit or it living overseas ten months out of the year. They aren't going to be sending inspectors to knock on doors. I'm a good example of the difficulties. I was away on t…

Maybe you can have one residence which is excluded, but for people who own dozens of condos, anything past the first one can be checked more thoroughly?

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#279

Post by mcphage »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #269
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.

Google abandons projects when they don't make business sense. Or perhaps you think Google is a charity that just keeps randoms apps running on servers? Maybe it should be funded with tax-dollars then.

> Maybe it should be funded with tax-dollars then.

That's kinda what they were going after.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#280

Post by mdkrkeo9 »

ehsankia wrote: post #275
irieid9 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the banal correction of Google vs Alphabet And comparing website dev to community planning And ignoring the argument that communities are stuck focusing on profit generation which is acting as a block on their agency to collectively improve their communities Did you actually read the post or get stuck on the alphabet not google part and fill in the rest of the post with non sequitur? Food delivery exist…

> Food delivery existed before “tech companies” Per-company delivery is not sustainable for anything else than Pizza and a few other fast food places. There was no centralized system like food deliveries. Also, not only is it keeping restaurants alive, it is also providing jobs to many drivers. > You do know society existed before the year 2000, yes? Yes, I remember having to pull out my paper map to go anywhere, hav…

Jobs, restaurants, etc, arbitrary goals of a society. Not legal obligations at all

Freedom from having my agency bent towards pampering the rich while my poorer family can’t pay rent and goto a doctor is the freedom I’m after

Freedom is a word. The definition is flexible. Your bouncing around the world easy peasy and not having to learn to cook is not an obligation everyone has to enable through grand scale effort

Especially when the vast majority doing the work can’t afford it themselves

So much freedom for them! being your bellhop every day

Omg a paper map and a first world problems of VHS! Better silo the masses cash to produce iPhones for this burdened creature (don’t forget to charge margins that enable you to buy new a Ferrari every day for life, make them design and build it and pay you for the privilege)

This is some disingenuous bullshit. The western world, ladies and gentlemen. Yesterday’s creature comforts are today’s burdens of invention. Omg!

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