Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs Unveils Its High-Tech 'City-Within-a-City' Plan for Toronto (theverge.com) 46
Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet's smart city subsidiary, released its massive plan Monday to transform a slice of Toronto's waterfront into a high-tech utopia. From a report: Eighteen months in the making and clocking in at 1,524 pages, the plan represents Alphabet's first, high-stakes effort to realize Alphabet CEO Larry Page's long-held dream of a city within a city to experiment with innovations like self-driving cars, public Wi-Fi, new health care delivery solutions, and other city planning advances that modern technology makes possible. Previously, Sidewalk Labs called it "a neighborhood built from the internet up." But on Monday, Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff went a step further to describe it as "the most innovative district in the world."
The plan includes: Ten new buildings of mixed-use development consisting primarily of thousands of new residential units, as well as retail and office spaces, all made from mass timber. A proposal to extend the city's light-rail system to serve the new neighborhood. Redesigning streets to reduce car use and promote biking and walking. Installation of public Wi-Fi, in addition to other sensors to collect "urban data" to better inform housing and traffic decisions, for example. Proposal to reduce greenhouse gases by up to 89 percent. Building the new Canadian headquarters of Google on the western edge of Villiers Island. Further reading: Former Firefox VP on What It's Like To Be Both a Partner of Google and a Competitor via Google Chrome; Sidewalk Labs' 1,500-Page Plan for Toronto Is a Democracy Grenade.
The plan includes: Ten new buildings of mixed-use development consisting primarily of thousands of new residential units, as well as retail and office spaces, all made from mass timber. A proposal to extend the city's light-rail system to serve the new neighborhood. Redesigning streets to reduce car use and promote biking and walking. Installation of public Wi-Fi, in addition to other sensors to collect "urban data" to better inform housing and traffic decisions, for example. Proposal to reduce greenhouse gases by up to 89 percent. Building the new Canadian headquarters of Google on the western edge of Villiers Island. Further reading: Former Firefox VP on What It's Like To Be Both a Partner of Google and a Competitor via Google Chrome; Sidewalk Labs' 1,500-Page Plan for Toronto Is a Democracy Grenade.
Simple Answer (Score:3, Funny)
How does Google plan to prevent their part of the city from getting feces all over it like is common in so many other areas of Toronto?
Google FecalBot 4000 (a side project of Boston Dynamics before they were sold) will take care of cleaning up those unwanted feces that the normal city refuses to clean.
Just poop where you like, a FecalBot will appear and hand over some TP, then clean up your mess before most people even get a whiff.
Don't worry about the video the bots capture, that's just used by Google to r
KENDALL IS UNEDUCATED, UNEMPLOYED AND A LIAR (Score:1)
https://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=14094832&cid=58707462 = COLLAGE GRAD? Loooool! Most people faking their educations would at least be able to spell the word though... are you retarded Kendall?
Are they building this thing at sea level? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Lake Ontario water is level is 249 feet above sea level.
I see what you're doing there, Google! (Score:3)
Beta..
Gamma...
DELTA CITY!
So a regular city + google data mining? (Score:1)
Behold our techno-savvy innovations like condos, light rail, and bike lanes! All at the low low cost of allowing us to collect as much information about every person that walks within 100 yards of this area as possible.
What Will Happen to the Poor People (Score:2)
Galt's Gulch? Shangri-La? Rapture? (Score:3)
The town had a strict set of rules imposed by the managers. Alcohol, women, tobacco and even football were forbidden within the town, including inside the workers' own homes. Inspectors would go from house to house to check how organised the houses were and to enforce these rules. The inhabitants circumvented these prohibitions by paddling out to merchant riverboats moored beyond town jurisdiction, often hiding contraband goods inside fruits like watermelons. A small settlement was established 8 kilometres (5 mi) upstream on the "Island of Innocence" with bars, nightclubs and brothels.
The workers on the plantations were given unfamiliar food, such as hamburgers and canned food, and forced to live in American-style housing. Most disliked the way they were treated - being required to wear ID badges and work through the middle of the day under the tropical sun - and would often refuse to work.
The government of Brazil was suspicious of any foreign investments, particularly in the northern Amazonian region, and offered little help. It wasn't long before the numerous problems began to take a toll on the project and the decision was made to relocate. Fordlandia was abandoned by the Ford Company in 1934, and the project was relocated downstream to Belterra, 40 kilometres (25 mi) south of the city of Santarem, where better conditions to grow rubber existed. By 1945, synthetic rubber had been developed, reducing world demand for natural rubber. Ford's investment opportunity dried up overnight without producing any rubber for Ford's tires, and the second town was also abandoned. In 1945, Henry Ford's grandson Henry Ford II sold the area comprising both towns back to the Brazilian government for a loss of over US$20 million (equivalent to $278 million in 2018).
In spite of the huge investment and numerous invitations, Henry Ford never visited either of his ill-fated towns.
In Toronto? Where they have WINTER? (Score:3)
"Redesigning streets to reduce car use and promote biking and walking."
In Toronto.
Where they get WINTER. From https://www.studentlife.utoron... [utoronto.ca]: "The temperature doesn't usually go below –20C and the average winter temperature is only –4.6C."
What ARE these people smoking???
Re:In Toronto? Where they have WINTER? (Score:4, Informative)
I used to bike to school in BC in the Rocky Mountains, where there's a lot more snow.
Canadians aren't as faint of heart as Yanks are.
You do need to repressurize your tires though. The air inside the tubes contracts, so you need to make sure it's resting against the house in the carport on a hook.
Places still need things moved around, right? (Score:2)
Ci
Re: (Score:2)
No flying cars, no flying cars (Score:2)
I think this is all a terrible idea, but hey, I left Toronto almost a decade ago, in favour of its suburbs an hour away.
That said, I actually wish any of this would happen. Anything that could actually push Toronto to modernize anything would inspire Toronto to modernize more.
Alas, it won't happen.
Toronto suffers, as some giant cities do, from a terrible inertia. Ten million people don't move fast. Two hours of full-speed highway driving from one side to the other is too wide to approach. Combine the two