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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

#361

Post by bergstromm466 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #174
geddy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing projects, so that in a year everyone can complain about the crime rate increasing and the quality stores closing and being replaced by fast food chains. It's like everyone's solution to make everything affordable is to aim to please everyone below the poverty line while giving a middle finger to everyone above it.

Wait what, you're saying that poor people bring crime right? And what's your solution, to make them even poorer or homeless? Or are you just using class as a proxy for something else?

I hear you brother/sister. I honestly believe, the people with these arguments have never experienced any hardships - which mean they can't understand the ruthlessness of their arguments. So ingrained are they in the Cultural Hegemony of Western civilization. I recently watched 'Owned: A Tale Of Two Americas', which is a great documentary on the US's racist housing policies.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#362

Post by scarface74 »

forgotmylogin2 wrote: post #353
scarface74 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-residents-con... https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/google-fiber-to-pay-nearly-4-m... Google Fiber prepares to pull the plug on Louisville customers tonight, the tech company has agreed to pay Metro government $3.84 million to fix damage to city streets, Mayor Greg Fischer’s said Monday. The payments, to be made over 20 months, will cover removing fiber cables and sealant fro…

This makes your original complaint that they were ruining streets look even sillier. They've agreed to reverse all the damage they've done. I'm not sure how you're angry about this.

That was after getting pressured by the local government.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#364

Post by shoulderfake »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #274
netcan wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you think Toronto is a functioning city, I suggest you do some traveling.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#366

Post by reportingsjr »

derefr wrote: post #318
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…

> 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."

Which is almost precisely what happened. Cincinnati is notorious for this sort of thing.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#367

Post by kapuasuite »

nickv wrote: post #317
asdff wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 start…

How does the number of new units stack up to what was being built in the 60s, 50s, 40s, 30s, etc.?

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#368

Post by na85 »

v7p1Qbt1im wrote: post #224
na85 wrote: post #140

My issue with Sidewalk Labs was the incredibly obvious facade they put up: pretending to care about making cities better when it really was just a thin veneer over finding new ways to expand surveillance capitalism. In fact their "Head of Urban Systems" was quoted[0] as saying that public discussions over data ownership and privacy were "irresponsible". The true agenda is plainly obvious to anyone who cares to look.…

I‘m not defending massive tech companies. But in this case it might be a bit different. Back when Larry Page still did interviews he mentioned a couple of times that the concept of cities needs to be rethought. Talking out of my ass I‘m pretty sure that he more or less told Doctoroff to go wild and handed him 100 million. Alphabet can kind of do this stuff because so far their still growing steadily and a majority of…

>They can always figure that out later.

And therein lies the problem. If they don't have a business model for profitability then they'll just fall back on the corporate DNA, which is surveillance and tracking for profit.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#369

Post by sloreti »

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.

Have you read Bertaud? His central thesis is how urban economics, as measured by data collection, must inform urban planning. Sidewalk Lab’s plans were very congruent with his ideas.
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