Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

Post by ghostly_s » Wed, May 10, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

adrianratnapala wrote: post #39

theCricketer wrote: post #13

Out of curiousity and so we can all concretely imagine how Sidewalk Labs plans to transform cities, can someone explain what are the speicific changes and associated benefits in this new kind of city? It mentions, autonomous transit, ride sharing, cheaper housing (how?). Can someone paint a fuller picture of what will be new and how it will be beneficial. I'm not skeptical at all, in fact I'm very hopeful. I just wan…

If an artificial town could be self sustaining, a lot of the benefits you want explained might just happen just by not having legacy stuff. E.g. the roads, and road rules could designed with new forms of transport in mind. Housing might (initially!) be cheaper because zoning requirements don't force prices up. There's wishful thinking in all of the above, but I think that is concentrated in the wish that such a town…

Post by maxerickson » Wed, May 10, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #120

afuchs wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference, the average salary for a software engineer, in Toronto, is close to $71,000 CAD/year. Taking into account the current CAD/USD exchange rate, brings it to approximately $52,000 USD/year. Each country has different costs, taxes and otherwise, for both employees and employers. The effects of those costs have not been included with those figures.

For reference on the cost side, the median home in San Francisco is $1.16M[1] (USD). The mean home in Toronto is $921K[2] (CAD; about $674K USD). Median figures are, unfortunately, not publicly provided in Canada, but given the nature of home valuations (especially in Toronto where you can find multi-million dollar mansions), a comparable amount is presumably quite a bit lower than that. [1] https://www.zillow.com/sa…

Post by rhino369 » Wed, May 10, 2017, 6:46 PM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #4

easilyBored wrote: post #3

"Sidewalk Labs has discussed creating an entire micro-city or district that could showcase the company’s ideas for urban planning...." all great, until Google decides to stop funding /working on the project.

Wouldn't almost all the cost be front loaded making their ongoing involvement nice but not required?

Post by Apocryphon » Wed, May 10, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #60

eigenvector wrote: post #36

> He’s also hinted at tech’s ability to overhaul zoning rules and control housing costs, a particular interest of Alphabet’s Page. Yeah, right. Toronto is one of the most retrograde cities on housing intensification (it still hasn't intensified around the Bloor-Danforth subway that was built a generation ago)[1]. In fact many neighbourhoods are losing population as the region grows due to extremely restrictive zoning…

And how would they control housing costs? Not going to stop speculators from China and Russia desperately trying to move money out of their home countries to stop the government getting its hands on it

Post by sanswork » Wed, May 10, 2017, 7:44 PM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #125

sanswork wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't almost all the cost be front loaded making their ongoing involvement nice but not required?

Artificially planned mixed use "downtowns" (for lack of a better term) require some sort of anchoring force: location, food and shopping, employment, etc. If that force here is based on google doing something--and they fail or just stop--then the development will fail. America is littered with these kind of developments. In growing markets with strong demand, worst case, you just turn the retail/office space into lof…