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Google’s Founders Wanted to Shape a City – Toronto Is Their Chance
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- yohann305 9y agothis message will probably get downvotes but my first feeling that came out was how about this American company shapes American cities first. I live in Miami, and we need more dev jobs. In South Florida, the dev community is super small.. This is unacceptable, we need help down here. PS: go ahead and downvote me, my opinion doesn't need your approval. PS#2: i did not read the article, i just read the title. So what?! i can't comment? Yes i can, tyvm...
- shkkmo 9y agoSo go use your american voting rights to convince your city to offer 800 acres in one of those cities for redevelopment rather than assuming someone else will do all the work for you.
- muninn_ 9y agoWell, the only issue with this is that you're assuming that your voting rights will actually deliver results. From what I see in the American political system - you'd be lucky to get 5% of what you wanted.
- dang 9y agoPlease don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes. It's tedious and does no good. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- asdfasdfasd333 9y agosorry, your opinion is wrong. look into it.
- andys627 9y agoTo those saying "a big company shaping cities is bad" - take a hard look at how American cities are shaped now and the big companies who influenced the relevant policies. You're going to find oil, car, tire, etc companies at the forefront.
- rayiner 9y agoAlso take a hard look at what happened to cities in the aftermath of corporate dependency. The midwest is littered with cities and towns that were left polluted and bankrupt after their corporate sponsor moved on.
- xapata 9y agoHow about the Northeast? NYC and Boston seem fine. It's not really an issue of company, but industry. Cities that are single-industry are fragile.
- deusofnull 9y agoAnd if a company (or set of companies) of a given industry is operating in a single industry city, they hold all the cards in that city. That is advantageous for these companies. It was in the past and it is now, even considering the push of big companies back into cities. A lot of corporations moved out of cities and into small municipalities / smaller states in the second half of the 20th century. They were given the gold-star treatment with tax breaks, infrastructure projects to support their corporate campuses, etc. I know a town in New Jersey where Lokheed Martin employs probably more than half of the home owners in the town. Who do you think runs that town?
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoLockheed Martin is actually incredible in the scope that it influences government. The reason the F-35 continued to have such strong support even after numerous reports of design flaws and massive cost overruns: Lockheed spread the development of the F-35 over 46 states, so almost any Congressman who acts against the F-35 program acts against jobs in his or her own state. http://www.businessinsider.com/this-map-explains-the-f-35-fiasco-2014-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/this-map-explains-the-f-35-fi...
- didibus 9y agoI just hope they make the area dense in population, and design it for the pedestrian and not the car.
- 52-6F-62 9y agoI have no real bearing on it yet, but if their former projects are any tell, it's likely they will want a mix. They do a lot of traffic optimization research. Maybe this is their chance to implement some of it. It will be interesting should this go forward. There's a town hall on November 1. If I can make it work I'm going to go.
- Splines 9y agoI've only visited a few times, and someone local could probably give a better idea of how the area is, but my impression of downtown Toronto was that while it is car-accessible it is also very pedestrian friendly. Lots of sidewalk and mass transit options and a downtown that has locals walking around at night (versus emptying out when everybody goes home at the end of the office day).
- alexasmyths 9y agoYou mean like all cities were built 100 years ago? We already know how to build great cities. No tech or vision is needed. Just some basic insight. The 'urban planners' of the 1950s-1970s really created the monster of the suburbs, now they're going to mess with the city? No thanks. Vienna is a great, clean, walkable, functional city. Want a hyperloop? Put it underground. Want wifi? Make it so it's not physically obtuse. There. Modern city. See?
- didibus 9y agoYup, I pretty much mean like good old european cities. I want cities of the future to be an evolution over cities of the past instead of an evolution over cities of the present.
- dx034 9y agoThat's why many European cities are trying to go back where they came from. London changed many roads in the 60s-80s, introducing one-way roads to improve traffic flow. This is now reversed to slow down traffic and improve life for pedestrians & cyclists. In other areas (bank junction, oxford street), cars are banned completely. Big cities with good public transport have no real need for any private traffic at daytime. Deliveries are mostly done overnight anyway and taxis are only tolerated because they create a lot of jobs.
- Tiktaalik 9y agoIt’s hard to “move fast and break things” in government because in modern city development, neighbourhood consultation is the basis of how decisions are made, and for good reason. Neighbourhood consultation is a reaction to past urban planning regrets and failures, where heavy handed government “urban renewal” initiatives razed entire neighbourhoods, most often marginalized and ethnic minority ones. In the worst case community consultation can be distorted into blind NIMBYism that serves only to slow down all development, but nonetheless we know that from our previous mistakes that consultation is required. I would count myself among those a bit concerned about Silicon Valley being so eager to “fix” problems with cities. Will Sidewalk Labs employ and listen to urban planning experts that have studied cities for their entire careers or is Toronto going to be a sandbox for clueless software engineers' pet theories? Will Google be so eager to test out self driving cars that they’ll discount and ignore decades of knowledge about how cars impact neighbourhoods?
- jamesrcole 9y ago> clueless software engineers I think it's a bit unfair to assume out of hand that they'll be clueless. . The other side of the coin is that new ideas often come from outside of a field. Sometimes expertise can mean expertise in the established, unquestioned dogma of a field. (I'm saying that as a matter of principle. I don't know specifically what it's like in this case). I definitely think we need more experimentation in society - small experiments to test out ideas, where successes can be copied elsewhere in the country and world.
- acdha 9y agoOne look at how badly google has managed their online communities, support, etc. suggests that this should be assumed until proven otherwise. There’s just such a track record of trying to conflate problems which can be automated with the problems the real world actually has.
- jamesrcole 9y agoThey've handled a number of things poorly. But they're not a monolithic entity, and I don't think we can make assumptions about exactly who will be involved with this and how they'll handle it. Why do we need to assume anything now, anyway? I think it's appropriate to be agnostic about it. We can't know until if and when it happens.
- Apocryphon 9y agoIs Toronto among the class of cities that are relatively new enough to be shaped by a large corporation moving in? From what I've heard, a lot of the development in that town has happened in the postwar, and is still in rapid development mode.
- 52-6F-62 9y agoIt's a tad complicated. Toronto isn't that new. However a good portion of the city burned down in 1904 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Toronto_(1904) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Toronto_(1904)
- Apocryphon 9y agoI didn't mean that the city itself was founded recently, more like compared to other east coast cities such as New York, Boston, or Montréal, a lot of parts of the city was built recently.
- 52-6F-62 9y agoThat's true. In part because of the great fire. In other cases, there was rolling development. There has been an influx of new tower construction over the past decade or so -- largely condos, mind you. As well as the Daniel Lee Chin crystal addition to the ROM and the new Varisty Blues stadium at U of T. BlogTO has a large number of "then and now" photo series you can have a look at for comparison if you're interested. http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/05/what_queen_west_used_to_look_like_in_toronto/ http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/05/what_queen_west_used_to_l...
- alexasmyths 9y agoA city can be in 'perpetual rapid development' if they are constantly tearing down the old and building the new. Toronto was reasonably spread out. The Canadian economy is addicted to 'new construction' as a form of growth + plus mass-scale immigration. Without it, the GDP numbers would not be good. Granted - the GDP/capita numbers would be just fine, so the choice is ideological. Toronto opened up it's downtown to residential construction and that has been most of the change: massive residential towers (or even smaller ones) closer to downtown. Of course - the endless construction of identical looking homes for 100Km in all direction continues unabated. Driving North out of Toronto now - it goes on forever: identical homes, a Timmies, a Starbucks, a Home Depot, a TD Bank, another batch of the same homes, a Timmies, a Starbucks, a TD Bank - reapeat ad nauseum. I think the expansion has largely been a disaster and we'll look back on it mostly as an economic trick to fill as many homes as possible in a short period of time.
- rainythunder 9y agoFuck no. I have no desire for the world to turn into hipster Shadowrun.
- satya71 9y agoThe hubris! We have a set of democratic institutions to do that called "government"
- samspenc 9y agoAFAIK, Sidewalk Labs in NYC has just put up fast-speed Internet WiFi stations that also function as advertising billboards and phone stations (and phone charging stations) at the same time. This Wired story has some photos: https://www.wired.com/2016/02/googles-city-fixing-sidewalk-labs-is-finally-getting-to-work/ https://www.wired.com/2016/02/googles-city-fixing-sidewalk-l... It looks like they're looking to do a lot more than that in Toronto?
- 52-6F-62 9y agoIn short, they're going to build a neighbourhood from the bottom up.
- Animats 9y agoWhen SF made a deal like that with JCDEcaux, they got pay toilets.
- bob_theslob646 9y agoThey already are. https://security.stackexchange.com/q/169374/122495 https://security.stackexchange.com/q/169374/122495 ( How is Google's Sidewalk Labs Tracking me?)
- ggggtez 9y agoI wonder if people see the word Google and just freak out. If you read closely you'll see it's a bid. They are preparing a plan but City officials still would need to approve the plan. Y'all acting like Google bought the land, which isn't true.
- dx034 9y agoNot because it's google. But because companies shaping cities hasn't worked out well in the past. E.g. optimising a city for autonomous vehicles might not be a good idea compared to optimising it for walking.
- 0x4f3759df 9y agoToronto is already one of the best walkable cities in North America (Jane Jacobs even moved there) Why not fix a place that has more problems, like this suggestion, Let's Build A Village From A Parking Lot http://andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20151203.php#.WejmJ4hOk2w http://andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20151203.php#.WejmJ4hOk2...
- jbob2000 9y agoThis area of Toronto is difficult to get to. It's cut off from the rest of the city by a large elevated highway (Gardiner) and a huge river (Don River). It's neglected for a reason. I really think this would be detrimental to Sidewalk Labs' mission, all of the work would get ignored.
- asdfasdfasd333 9y agoNo way. The harborfront has undergone a massive transformation the last couple of years and is one of the most dense residential areas in the city now. Also, it is projected to add 280,000 residents and 190,000 jobs in the coming years. The city has reiterated time and time again that Toronto is a waterfront city, and they will continue to invest and prioritize heavily in this area.
- okreallywtf 9y agoThere has been talk on the radio locally about the amazon hq2 and the chances that Toronto might be in the running as well if they were in the market to do the same thing.
- 659087 9y agoThey can name the area "Panopticon Village".
- jaux 9y agoSomething is going to happen in the North!
- woolvalley 9y agoThe reason why tech companies can not easily make their cities better is because of local law & policy and not by choice of the company. I bet google would just love to induce high rise development in palo alto with a monorail loop that serviced the FB, Google & Stanford campuses and a few stops around caltrain stations. But they can't because prop 13 makes new housing a net negative on the city budget and local NIMBYs love their prop 13 shielded price gains, creating a strong force to disallow new housing and only allow new office space.
- dx034 9y agoWhile I think high population density is great, I wouldn't want Google to redesign silicon valley. Cities formed by a single company (or even single industry) suffer when the industry leaves or collapses. Today's tech companies won't be around forever.