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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

#311

Post by asdff »

AIME15 wrote: post #97
helen___keller wrote: post #9

Sidewalk labs has a LOT of good ideas but, even putting aside privacy concerns related to Google ownership, the simple fact is that these good ideas are nearly intractable even when planned by trusted organizations with the best of intentions. Western cities just don't move very fast nowadays, for better and for worse. Maybe this would work better in a country where cities develop faster and with less protest from ci…

Works best if you can just steamroll through with the project from the start. PoC small scale (though much larger than 12 acres, which is about 2 Manhattan city blocks), then large scale. Requires feds to be totally on board, have the power to green light everything quickly, and have tons of capital to deploy. Unfortunately for SWL, it's not possible for an Alphabet company to build in Saudi Arabia or China.

They could try in Jakarta, or Singapore, or Japan, or Korea, or hundreds of other places around the world. There are plenty of places with a dearth of capital and labor coupled with a willingness to build modern cities that aren't Saudi Arabia or China.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#313

Post by reportingsjr »

gamblor956 wrote: post #44
reportingsjr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two years is nothing when it comes with planning and development in the US, unfortunately. A little anecdote, here in Cincinnati I was peripherally involved with a local nonprofit taking over management of an abandoned bit of city part to build new multi-use trails. It took 20 years for the park board to even listen, then once an agreement was reached it took another /year and a half/ to get the paperwork to the poin…

local nonprofit taking over management of an abandoned bit of city This is why it took a long time. The city was handing over management over part of itself in perpetuity. That needs to be done with care and deliberation. Moreover, there are liability issues related to third parties making alterations to city lands that could result in ruinous liability to the city if citizens get injured on the altered lands and the…

>This is why it took a long time. The city was handing over management over part of itself in perpetuity. That needs to be done with care and deliberation.

The city has the right at any time to revoke the MOU between the city and this group, so there wasn't really risk there. I understand that care should be taken, but at a certain point you begin having serious inefficiencies.

>Moreover, there are liability issues related to third parties making alterations to city lands that could result in ruinous liability to the city if citizens get injured on the altered lands and the city didn't fully inspect the alterations. This is through an IMBA chapter which accepts all liability and responsibility and includes insurance coverage. This is not some new, unique thing that is happening. There are many dozens if not hundreds of these agreements in place in other cities already.

>You also have potential drainage and soil issues to deal with, which need to be reviewed by geologists. And that's not getting into environmental reviews if there are at-risk species dwelling in that park. There aren't major structures being put in place, and most of the parks around here have very, very degraded ecosystems except in a few notable, well known locations.

>All of those things take time. Programmers always complain about their customers wanting X in a few weeks when it really takes months.

>So why are programmers always complaining that it takes engineers, geologists, architects, and city planners months to do their jobs? Unlike programming, the stuff these professionals are doing/reviewing can't just be fixed with a patch. For what its worth I'm an electrical engineer, not a programmer, that deals more with manufacturing. My last job involved electronics for explosive atmospheres that were expected to last 10+ years minimum, so I have a good understanding of not being able to quickly send out fixes with a patch.

The process wasn't really transparent, so it really felt like people kind of dragging their feet and being very resistant to change. Something my city is known for (see famous Mark Twain quote about Cincy and the end of the world). I understand very well taking months to do things, but years for something like this is maddening.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#314

Post by reportingsjr »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #297
reportingsjr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two years is nothing when it comes with planning and development in the US, unfortunately. A little anecdote, here in Cincinnati I was peripherally involved with a local nonprofit taking over management of an abandoned bit of city part to build new multi-use trails. It took 20 years for the park board to even listen, then once an agreement was reached it took another /year and a half/ to get the paperwork to the poin…

I'm so confused by this comment. You're saying there is some city planning problem unique to the United States, but also cities in Canada? Could you help me understand how some friction to building in Cincinatti is relevant to Toronto or San Francisco, when different laws and political bodies apply to all?

Sorry, in my mind I combine the US and Canada since much of the planning coverage is in the same news outlets (e.g. streetsblog). For what its worth Canada seems to have many of the same planning and development issues the US has struggled with for the past decades.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#315

Post by madjam002 »

sneak wrote: post #268
neom wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://municipal.systems/ :)

FYI your website completely fails to render with cookies (and thus localStorage) off. Detailed explanation: https://sneak.berlin/20200211/your-website/

> If you’re not testing your website in a browser with cookies disabled, you’re not testing your website. This is one of the bare minimum of tests you should be performing.

As much as I think that webpages should work with cookies and localstorage turned off, this claim seems ridiculous.

How can testing a site for when cookies are disabled be considered the "bare minimum" of testing when it's a configuration that a very small minority of users will have?

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#317

Post by nickv »

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.

14 new residential high rises were built in SoMA in the past 5 years. 3 more are going up as we speak and opening in the next few months. That's a LOT of residential construction in a very short amount of time.

(Mind you that's just a 15 block area in East Cut/SoMA - I'm not even talking about ALL of Mission Bay which didn't exist 10 years ago or the Van Ness corridor or Mid-Market.)

The problem here is we only started building about 10 years ago (with One Rincon being the first major new building in a long time) and the rest of the Bay Area (for example, Brisbane notoriously) is nowhere near doing its fair share of building.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#318

Post by derefr »

reportingsjr wrote: post #30
donpdonp wrote: post #6

$50M and two years later - where are the conclusions? The results? A blog post of what happened? Two years seems like enough time to say we tried some amazing things and this is how it did or did not work.

Two years is nothing when it comes with planning and development in the US, unfortunately. A little anecdote, here in Cincinnati I was peripherally involved with a local nonprofit taking over management of an abandoned bit of city part to build new multi-use trails. It took 20 years for the park board to even listen, then once an agreement was reached it took another /year and a half/ to get the paperwork to the poin…

> It took 20 years for the park board to even listen

On that sort of timescale, that's less down to "things move slowly" and more down to "you can't get anything done in the wrong political climate, so you have to wait until appointed officials die and/or an entire generational shift in your municipality produces a sea-change of political views."

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#319

Post by WalterBright »

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.

> empty statement

Sorry, it's your cite.

> explain

Simple. People sharing living arrangements deciding to not share anymore. Fewer families with children, more single professionals. Confusing Detroit the city with Detroit the metropolitan area.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#320

Post by notatoad »

DHPersonal wrote: post #246
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 don't think a "smart city" is our answer; I think actually looking to the past is a better plan for a good city, such as what Strong Towns advocates. https://www.strongtowns.org/ (I have no affiliation with the organization)

i don't think a "smart city" is the answer either, but it's worth pointing out that the quayside project was not a smart city by any definition of the word city, it was a 4.9ha parcel (~7 standard city blocks) in a much larger city - possibly the perfect canvas for some experimentation.
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