What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?
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What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?
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Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?
#2It sure would be cool to see someone successfully develop a new smart city. The idea has been proposed many, many times, but at least in the U.S. it never seems to work out for some reason (and it appears in Canada as well).
I would love to see a new city designed from the ground up on some currently uninhabited plot of land. You could make it walkable, beautiful, design it to have higher density housing from the start—so many things that would be difficult to add to a city that already exists (an underground tube system for transporting food and packages??). I guess the economic and individual incentives just aren’t there. Even if you built it, would people come?
Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?
#3It sure would be cool to see someone successfully develop a new smart city. The idea has been proposed many, many times, but at least in the U.S. it never seems to work out for some reason (and it appears in Canada as well). I would love to see a new city designed from the ground up on some currently uninhabited plot of land. You could make it walkable, beautiful, design it to have higher density housing from the sta…
The problem is the "smart" part of it - if it's smart in the sense that it was properly planned around something other than the automobile, then sure, I think you can get a lot of people on board. All the stuff in your comment sounds great.
The problem is when you start adding cameras and electronics. It's obvious Sidewalk Labs is just an arm of the Google data collection funnel. I don't want any part of that in my life.
Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?
#4It sure would be cool to see someone successfully develop a new smart city. The idea has been proposed many, many times, but at least in the U.S. it never seems to work out for some reason (and it appears in Canada as well). I would love to see a new city designed from the ground up on some currently uninhabited plot of land. You could make it walkable, beautiful, design it to have higher density housing from the sta…
I seem to recall there was some kind of effort in the UAE somewhere? Not sure how far that got.
Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?
#5It sure would be cool to see someone successfully develop a new smart city. The idea has been proposed many, many times, but at least in the U.S. it never seems to work out for some reason (and it appears in Canada as well). I would love to see a new city designed from the ground up on some currently uninhabited plot of land. You could make it walkable, beautiful, design it to have higher density housing from the sta…
It's been talked about for so long now, often proposed by the wealthiest, most powerful people and corporations in the world. So it seems like it won't happen?
Ex: EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) was originally supposed to be this in the 60s[1]. And was in a place exactly like what you propose (a large uninhabited tract of land).
After Walt died they just made it a theme park of the future envisioned by giant corporations like Exxon.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epcot#1960s:_Experimental_conc...
Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?
#6The prospect of handing off city data to further product development for an American corporation to then sell it back to said Canadian city sounded and still sounds pretty dubious no? I mean we didn’t say no to smart cities, we just said no to alphabet. Great call imo.
Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?
#7As someone who lives in Toronto, the collapse of this project is a great outcome. While the goals of the project seem forward thinking and could benefit society in the long run (in terms of renewable building, etc) Google is 110% the wrong company to be involved.
Imagine you lived there and your google account gets banned by some overzealous ML model. Do you just get locked out of your house?
If Google, or any other company, wants to make this kind of development, they should be regulated as a public utility and be accountable as such
Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?
#8I'll take "being super creepy" for $5, Alex.
Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?
#9Watching this unfold as a resident of the next-neighbourhood-over was fascinating. At first everyone was excited that a big, American company would choose Toronto for this sort of project. The initial RFP from Waterfront Toronto had very clearly been put together with them in mind.
But development takes a long time, and between the initial agreement and the plan being released, public opinion had turned strongly against big-tech. Those Waterfront Toronto board members were basically fired for not foreseeing the change in public opinion.
Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?
#10As someone who lives in Toronto, the collapse of this project is a great outcome. While the goals of the project seem forward thinking and could benefit society in the long run (in terms of renewable building, etc) Google is 110% the wrong company to be involved. Imagine you lived there and your google account gets banned by some overzealous ML model. Do you just get locked out of your house? If Google, or any other…
Yep, I've been saying for ages that the big companies need to have their banning policies be public overseen and accountable if they plan on having any significant impact on our lives in this way.