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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

#301

Post by asdff »

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…

California is short by millions of units. This number can be calculated. A cheap city example is Cleveland. The reason why it's so cheap? In 1960, 900,000 people lived there. Today, 400,000 people live there. The population of LA in 1960 was 2.4 million. Today, its over 4 million in the city proper. Units in LA are on the market for a weekend, you sign your lease on monday, and move in by thursday. In Cleveland, listings stay up for months. The result is that 600k buys you two bedrooms and a bath in LA, and six bedrooms and seven baths in Cleveland. It's a very basic supply and demand problem.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#302

Post by cat199 »

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.

this presumes in some sense that they are not already.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#303

Post by kunai »

Barrin92 wrote: post #266
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…

The entire idea of a "smart city" is pure anathema to how vibrant cities function. It's a technocratic wet dream, the digital version of Robert Moses and Corbusier making a comeback. The people preoccupied with this should read some Alain Bertaud and learn how markets work and then go do more productive things with their time than trying to micromanage cities.

Jane Jacobs is required reading as well.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#304

Post by asdff »

sudosysgen wrote: post #282
WalterBright wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for rural communities, they are not comparable in the slightest to cities. Anything can be proven by discarding data that doesn't fit. Rural population is in decline, and prices drop with it. You can even buy entire towns in Appalachia for a song. > Detroit Your own cite says: “New housing construction has barely kept pace with the growth in housing demand over the past decade.”

>Your own cite says: “New housing construction has barely kept pace with the growth in housing demand over the past decade.” This is an empty statement the article writer wrote to attempt to justify it. Housing demand in Detroit cannot have increased, because the population of Detroit was and is decreasing. If you can explain to me how a decreasing population can mean an increase in demand, I'd be all ears.

What groups of people are moving in and out of Detroit? One explanation could be that people who previously could afford rents in Detroit can no longer do so, and the ones moving in are the ones who can afford these rents and mortgages. A lot of these low income neighborhoods in inner city Detroit have been raised and left to nature over the years, historic supply in the city center has been destroyed and what is left or is currently being constructed might be pricier housing comparatively. The working class greatly outnumbers the capital class everywhere. Take it with a grain of salt as I don't have any data in front of me, I'm merely postulating, but this would explain this trend.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#305

Post by kunai »

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…

This type of mentality is exactly what led to "urban renewal" in the 1960s and the complete destruction of American inner cities to be replaced with 18-lane freeways and grimy concrete housing projects that concentrated poverty and sent crime rates skyrocketing.

Because planners' hubris, similar to the insane technocratic Silicon Valley hubris these days, led to them making terrible decisions with zero community input and a team of yes-men around them.

> I might not oppose a dictator coming in for two years and just having at it.

Ironic a culture that fetishizes free markets and an open marketplace of ideas favors totalitarianism because they find the idea of being part of a larger human community with all its flaws icky. Step away from the keyboard some more and maybe, I dunno, go outside and talk to people? Problems like these are never solved with Docker.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#306

Post by gamblor956 »

asdff wrote: post #111
gamblor956 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco has changed immensely in just the last decade. It may not be noticeable if you live there because you only see the incremental day by day changes, but as someone who only sporadically visits the Bay Area: it's nothing like it was in 2010. It's significantly more built up (and out), more skyscrapers, more apartments, more condos, more everything.

Housing prices would tell you there is actually less of everything, relatively. Demand has surged, sufficient supply has yet to be constructed, queue housing crisis. Not enough housing is being built in California's cities.

Less of everything on a relative basis, but more of everything on an absolute basis.

It's a game of moving goal posts.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#307

Post by asdff »

matchbok wrote: post #261
sudosysgen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and in most cities incredible amounts of condos have been built and prices of rent for low-income individuals have increased massively. It does not work in the real world. Supply is not supply. For one, these condos being built can essentially not be rented, and that means that they are not supply for low and middle income individuals.

This is incorrect. Those homes are expensive because the land beneath them is expensive. The finishes are largely irrelevant. And the land is expensive because there are not enough places like them.

It all comes down to job growth driving demand on housing supply. The better the local economy, the more hiring is going on, the more people are recruited and look for housing convenient to work. Hardly anyone uproots themselves and moves to a new city without having a job lined up first. The value of the underlying land is speculative based on demand induced by job growth.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#308

Post by asdff »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #64
briffle wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building Luxury condos does create affordable housing. Where do you think those people move from? interesting thought from this link: If you destroy 10,000 luxury condo's in Toronto tomorrow, will your prices go down? https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/1/how-luxury-hous...

People who buy luxury condos are probably not vacating affordable housing to do so. Why would you think that to be the case? The Strong Towns link you provided gives two examples of apartments build approximately a century ago. Trickle-down economics at its best. Build luxury apartments, fine. Probably not exclusively though, as in many cities the need is more pressing than that.

Just take a look at the housing market in any city with high demand, you won't see very much delta for a given size unit. In LA, the shittiest 1 bedroom apartment with cigarette burns in the carpet and a view of the freeway is only maybe 10% cheaper than new construction. Engineers working for Google in playa del ray are directly competing for the same housing stock as low income custodians at Google who fit an entire family or three in a one bedroom in Palms.

However, if you build an apartment with pretty colors and a pool and grill and some artificial grass for your dog to poop on, that engineer working for google in that cigarette stained apartment in palms might just stomach the premium on rent for a better place, and that slumlord with the cigarette stained apartments might have a little bit more trouble finding tenants at top of market rent rates.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#309

Post by _8j50 »

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…

The internet is at least as much dangerous as it is useful. Technology changes social power dynamics, often the people that enable it will design it in a way that benefits their own power dynamic.

Think of it this way, let's say a fascist genocidal group become rulers of that city/country, or let's say Google's intentions change and Google becomes many times more evil than it is now. Will this technology preserve the power of the people to nit just freely express their opinions but to take action based on their beliefs. Who controls access,surveillance and information? Even if the majority approve, will this preserve the liberties of the minority?

It's too late to ask these questions after the fact. I think it will work really well at first, my fear is actually that it won't stop at Toronto, and it will in the short term make a lot of people happy.

Technology has changed a lot but human nature has remained consistent. It would be foolish to fail to take into account hisorical lessons about humanity and social power dynamics when considering such drastic changes. Unfortunately, those who should make such considerations often lack technical knowledge and those with technical knowledge are blinded by immediate benefits and possibilities. I think this is the curse of living in relatively free socieites, you lack the perspective of seeing how fragile the ground you stand on really is.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#310

Post by asdff »

leoh wrote: post #24
pupppet wrote: post #17

TO dodged a bullet. It's Google's nature to lose interest and abandon their products. You think it's bad with software, imagine them building part of your city.

The cynicism here boggles the mind. You can talk blue in the face about all the products they haven't killed that power the world and people will just shake their heads in dismay and walk away muttering about Google Reader.

It would be absurd if they killed everything, that wouldn't be a very long lived company. But it is clear that they readily walk away from products if the profit isn't there. It's fine when it's some dumb piece of software, but absolutely not OK when it means a section of a city imo. And here we are in the comments section of an article describing Google doing just that.
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