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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?

#21

Post by gamblor956 »

treis wrote: post #18
jpgleeson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New, centrally planned cities have only ever been a disaster that quite quickly make apparent the shortcomings of the design professions. Brasilia is a good example of the sort of planned city that would be built. Widespread availability of cars positioned them as the symbols of modernity and so the city was designed around the car, resulting in an entirely unwalkable city that segregates the classes. See also Chandi…

>New, centrally planned cities have only ever been a disaster that quite quickly make apparent the shortcomings of the design professions. I can think of Washington DC and Salt Lake City that were planned and aren't disasters.

The planned parts of DC and SLC are the old parts of the city. The rest of those cities were not planned in the same way, and it shows in the haphazard geography and zoning. (For example: why does SLC have 24/7 factories a block from housing?)

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#22

Post by brudgers »

In May, the company announced it was abandoning the project, citing economic infeasibility. But what wasn’t mentioned was that the project had also become politically infeasible.

Google’s incompetence was multivalent. But that’s the nature of Dunning-Kruger incompetence. Toronto is not a bigger version of the bedroom communities it is familiar with. The site wasn’t lacking pie-in-the-sky planning exercises. Nor interest from deep pockets. The biggest incompetence was pitching the project as “what we want to do will finally put Toronto on the map.”

In real estate development, fanfare is to provide cover for fait accompli. Publicity before the ducks are rowed is amateur. Steamrollering opposition first requires a steamroller.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#23

Post by aurizon »

Greed and Avarice mixed with cupidity blended with terminal nimbyism pretty much sums it all up. Google was seen as a monster cash cow, and blood-suckers lined up to drill for gold. Property costs (not values) have ramped up in much the same way as if San Francisco, driven by height limits, density limits and the huge ramp up of properties bought and rented for income. (aka rent seeking). Often highly leveraged with 80%+ mortgages. the owners lice in fear of a market decline. Rogue AirBNB owners infest the market, even when precluded from doing that, they rent and litigate. So I think the smell of the terminal cupidity they detected drove them away.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#24

Post by Guidii »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #16
etimberg wrote: post #7

As 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…

My big problem from the beginning was that the money flow made no sense. Why should Toronto be paying for a Google experiment? Google benefitted far more than any other party involved, and that felt slimy.

Did money flow from the city to Alphabet? My understanding was that it was hugely in the opposite direction, with sidewalk investing alphabet money into the project.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#25

Post by hbosch »

xnx wrote: post #15
an_opabinia wrote: post #13

> transforming what had previously been an area east of downtown Toronto characterized by desolate parking lots and the graffiti-strewn foundations of demolished buildings Guess Toronto got its crap back. > Affordable housing was a top concern among Toronto residents before the pandemic, and in the economic fallout it will only grow as a priority, she said, as an example. It’s ironic. At least in technology, the way…

Housing would be much better if we could get it to follow anything like the technology price value trend. Housing today is barely better in terms of quality or value from 50 years ago. To expect housing to improve as fast as handheld devices is unrealistic, but I think they should be improving at around the same rate as cars.

>Housing would be much better if we could get it to follow anything like the technology price value trend.

Do you think people would be willing to buy a house for cheap with the trade off being that Google and Facebook get to collect data on everything you did inside the house, and then got to display ads inside the house?

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#26

Post by Invictus0 »

Big tech has pretty consistently failed to deliver on the rosy vision for the future they've been promising for decades. I can't imagine trusting Google to commit to building part of a city when they can't even stick to a mobile phone for a few years. If it went tits up I'm sure they'd just leave Toronto to foot the bill.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#27

Post by rchaud »

The project was killed for the right reasons; the residents, people that have to deal with its consequences and for whom the benefits were vaguely defined, opposed it.

If smart cities are inevitable, then a mega-corporation like Google with all the resources in the world should be jumping at the opportunity to build a new settlement where none currently exists. Shouldering the cost of such a project should not be a hindrance for them considering the potential economic benefits for themselves.

Let them create their own proof of concept and incentivize people to live and work there. The shift to remote work in the Covid age makes this much more feasible now than in the past.

No need to glom their surveillance technology on to an existing metropolis where people are already settled and don't have the option to opt out to any meaningful degree.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#28

Post by stan_rogers »

an_opabinia wrote: post #13

> transforming what had previously been an area east of downtown Toronto characterized by desolate parking lots and the graffiti-strewn foundations of demolished buildings Guess Toronto got its crap back. > Affordable housing was a top concern among Toronto residents before the pandemic, and in the economic fallout it will only grow as a priority, she said, as an example. It’s ironic. At least in technology, the way…

> Regardless of how you feel about data and surveillance and privacy or whatever, at least ad targeting has a long proven track record of actually delivering low real prices to consumers.

That really depends on how you define "real price", doesn't it? It's a price I'm not willing to pay.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#29

Post by dsl »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #16
etimberg wrote: post #7

As 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…

My big problem from the beginning was that the money flow made no sense. Why should Toronto be paying for a Google experiment? Google benefitted far more than any other party involved, and that felt slimy.

Google bought 12 acres of waterfront property and was working on development. Aside from the usual level of involvement (meetings, permitting, etc) the city had no skin in the game.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#30

Post by dsl »

antihero wrote: post #10
etimberg wrote: post #7

As 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.

The last public number was that Twitter was banning 10 fake bots per second. How exactly do you plan to have a public oversight process for fighting fraud and abuse at scale?
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