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Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City
- rubatuga 9y agoAgain, watch house and rental prices soar through the roof... Can't a poor student in Toronto get a break?
- sanswork 9y agoWhen that student wants property in the most prime space in the region probably not. Toronto already allows tons of new units(like this project) what more are you expecting from the city?
- kael12345 9y agohmmmm
- wungsten 9y agoThe problem is that U of T spans some of the best real estate in the city, and obviously students want to live near there.
- rubatuga 9y agoexactly
- sanswork 9y agoSo the uni should relocate or build more extensive student housing? Not sure how that is a problem for the city itself. Not everyone gets to live in prime areas.
- wbl 9y agoIf Toronto was building everywhere they would.
- sanswork 9y agoToronto is building everywhere around there. That's why every conversation about development in Toronto goes back and forth between 'too many condos!' and 'too expensive housing'.
- robotresearcher 9y agoUT is already present in the suburbs.
- otoburb 9y agoThe GP didn't specify U of T St. George campus specifically, but if we're assuming they were, students have a wide variety of residence options available to them at great rates[1] provided by the university. In cases where students don't wish to remain in the residences, they can move out and share apartments or condo units. Also, there aren't any U of T buildings[2] close to the Quayside cordon[3], hence I find it hard to believe that this particular project (or any) will raise rents all that much for students attending U of T on the St. George campus. [1] https://www.studentlife.utoronto.ca/hs/st-george-residences https://www.studentlife.utoronto.ca/hs/st-george-residences [2] http://map.utoronto.ca/ http://map.utoronto.ca/ [3] http://www.quaysideto.ca/ http://www.quaysideto.ca/
- theCricketer 9y agoOut 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 want to be able to picture the new kind of city more concretely.
- tenpies 9y agoPersonally I'm interested in seeing the privacy impact assessment if there is an actual proposal. This isn't Google doing it out of some utopian goodness of their heart. Everything in those 12 blocks will be logged, analyzed, and sold to advertisers.
- mikerice 9y agoYeah I mean I get why people in Toronto are excited, but not a single person is thinking of privacy implications. It grosses me out.
- cbhl 9y agoThe easiest way of making those things happen is a company town. The problem is that it's not financially sustainable, which becomes a problem if the company cuts spending or goes under (which has happened to a number of other company towns).
- adrianratnapala 9y agoIf 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 could get off the ground at all. But about the only kind of artificial town that I find plausible is when a state wants to build a new capital -- and that will immediately be a gravy train for parasites who want to crank up the costs.
- sanswork 9y agoI'm really excited for all the great stuff finally getting done on the waterfront in Toronto. Even before I left a few years ago you could comfortably walk from around the airport up to Sherbourne almost entirely along the water edge. This will push that to Parliament and link up the Distillery district. I don't imagine the storage lot next to Cherry st will last long after that. A far cry from my younger years where it was basically mud parking lots and heavy equipment east of redpath.
- easilyBored 9y ago"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.
- sanswork 9y agoWouldn't almost all the cost be front loaded making their ongoing involvement nice but not required?
- easilyBored 9y agoThey can't just flip a switch and make it happen. If I were Toronto I'd make them put a decent amount of money in an escrow account so the project is finished no matter what. But then this is Google's tech, so if they leave not sure how it works.
- sanswork 9y agoSo your concern isn't the ongoing operation but that they start working with waterfront TO on these 12 blocks and leave before their ideas are implemented? Why would the city require more of them than any other developer? Any development has a chance of falling before completion.
- easilyBored 9y agoI don't have a "concern," I merely stated what most people think of anything Google. I don't know enough about this project (the article didn't either) and I don't have a dog in this race. However, I do remember my grandma saying to never put any eggs in Google's baskets. She always said that she heard that from her grandma. Google will look after it's own interests, all the time. That's every quarter.
- sanswork 9y agoEvery developer will look after their own interests every quarter.
- dannyr 9y agoCrazy. People on Hacker News are still upset at Google for shutting down Reader.
- avaer 9y agoI don't think it's about being upset -- it's about pattern recognition and learning from one's mistakes as a consumer.
- Kurtz79 9y agoIn this case we are not really talking about a free consumer product, though. I would be surprised if Toronto's municipality would grant this development without having some guarantees of it being carried out, save for paying severe penalties.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- oculusthrift 9y agoyou realize they shut down like 80 percent of what they start? or atleast abandon it?
- dannyr 9y agoWhere did you pull that 80% from? Or you just feel like it's 80%? Most of Google's big projects are still alive today. Search, Gmail, Android, GSuite, Chrome, Drive, AdWords, YouTube, etc. There are a few big projects that they shut down but most are smaller projects. Do we want Google to just launch products that they will keep alive indefinitely whether it succeeds or not? Should Google not have started its self-driving car initiative, Calico, Fiber? Yeah, Glass failed. So what? Do you want a company to innovate? Have them try different things. You can't change the world by only doing things with 100% certainty.
- vtange 9y agoI can't help but notice right now that Toronto's name has been increasingly pushed as some sort of "next tech centre" (well, many cities in the world want to be something like that). Can someone who's actually there fill me in on what's happening there? How does Toronto's scene compare to say, New York or Seattle?
- win_ini 9y ago"Toronto is like New York, but without all the 'stuff'" - Steve Martin, SNL. Toronto has grown up a lot in the pst few years. The canadian dollar is about 20% less than USD, so VC dollars go further - and while competitive, hiring engineers is nothing like the bay. That said, there is a shallow pool of senior SaaS startup folks in Toronto compared to SF or New York.
- tormeh 9y ago>The canadian dollar is about 20% less than USD, so VC dollars go further How expensive a nation is and the exchange rate of its currency is independent.
- bigmanwalter 9y agoIn this case it isn't though. Canadian engineers make less than American engineers
- walshemj 9y agoExactly its why London is popular UK Engineers are cheap speak English natively and are used to being treated like second class profesionals.
- matthewrudy 9y ago20% cheaper since last June too.
- matthewrudy 9y ago
- Animats 9y agoSingapore did that for their Jurong Lake District in 2015, according to Wired. How did that work out?
- kael12345 9y agowaaaa
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eigenvector 9y ago> 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 rules.[2] A bit of Google money isn't going to change the electoral calculus of the local politicians that control that stuff. The most likely scenario is Google convinces the government to sell/give them land in Toronto's Port Lands at below market value, and they make a killing on developing it with some technological window-dressing like free ad-supported wi-fi which AFAIK is the only thing Sidewalk has launched to date. [1] http://brandondonnelly.com/post/152616141303/the-yellowbelt http://brandondonnelly.com/post/152616141303/the-yellowbelt [2] http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2017/02/2016-census-mapping-torontos-population-growth http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2017/02/2016-census-mapping-toro...
- walshemj 9y agoAnd 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
- rory096 9y agoBuild more housing.
- Apocryphon 9y agoEnact a foreign speculator tax like Vancouver did.
- drpgq 9y ago> He’s also hinted at tech’s ability to overhaul zoning rules and control housing costs, a particular interest of Alphabet’s Page. Yeah doesn't Silicon Valley and San Francisco have some pretty stringent zoning rules against intensification?
- lukasben 9y agoI don't have a source but I remember a panel discussion when Page came up with the idea to build a floating city in international waters. This way they could overcome the governmental regulations that slow down innovation, taxes etc. I can't help but think about Toronto as a testing ground for that. Add facebooks flying internet drones plus some space X space infrastructure. Sounds pretty cool to me.
- Heliosmaster 9y agoIf they can't pull it off, nobody will imho. But on the other hand, it's not like people haven't tried before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation
- matt4077 9y agoHow do taxes slow down innovation–considering all R&D costs can be deducted, and taxes only apply to profits? And which regulations, specifically, are holding back innovation at Google? Would their floating city allow me (to use one of your examples) to conduct rocket launches in my backyard?
- lukasben 9y agoI'm not from the US and the discussion was mostly about regulations from the states but what I got from it was: - foreign skilled workforce is from their perspective still to hard to employ (and the Muslim Ban could be an good example for that) - think about the massive amount of money that Apple has offshore because it's to expensive to bring it back to the US! Put that investment into R&D and the effect would be tremendous. - I don't know how high the cost for using the public infrastructure is in the US but building it from ground up and managing it by yourself might be cheaper (I assume thats what the Toronto project is all about). - do some research on costs for positions like "Governmental Relations Manager". google made some bad experiences in China with that
- 659087 9y agoI assume this high tech city will be covered in cameras, microphones, and sensors of various types constantly reporting back to Alphabet (in order to "improve your user experience")? "Good morning, Steve. Our 'smart sidewalk' noticed that you've gained several pounds and reduced the pace of your daily run over the past month" (insert personal trainer ad)
- Gravityloss 9y agoIs this because of tightening immigration in the US?
- PaulHoule 9y agoIt's Kansas City 2.0!
- rreichman 9y agoA bit sad that no US city was chosen for this project
- win_ini 9y agoWhy?
- jtraffic 9y ago"People thought it was crazy when Google decided to connect all the world’s information" I'd love to see a citation for this. I sort of doubt, at the moment, that anyone seriously said "Google is crazy for trying to connect the world's information." The implication is that I find the comparison to be a bit silly. The self driving car comparison is more accurate but much less informative: we still don't know how it will turn out.
- passive 9y agoMaybe it's poor phrasing, and the incredulity was about Google's ability to accomplish such a goal?
- moomin 9y agoIt's actually just dumb. It's not like Google ever pioneered any endeavour. They've merely done what Altavista and Yahoo did, only better. Equally, they don't actually connect all the world's information. Just sections of it where it's profitable to do so.
- asafira 9y agoI find it less silly and more just vacuous. Virtually every new idea has people who doubt it.
- verelo 9y agoToronto is certainly booming today, hiring is hard, houses are getting expensive and everyone is talking about joining in on the fun...meanwhile I live here and love it, please take your shoes off at the door. I'm a touch worried this will end up like the World Fair and we'll end up with a collection of derelict and unwanted "high tech" artefacts left for the original inhabitants to cleanup. I just don't trust Alphabet to act in a responsible way when it comes to respecting cities that real people live in.
- passive 9y agoC'mon Alphabet, bring this to Halifax! The land will be much cheaper, we've got a huge problem with students fleeing for greener pastures, and we have one of the best connected cities in the country.