11 ms·
If you're going to quote someone you should really post what they said. The short answer is: We want to build the first truly 21st-century city. The longer an
by bitmapbrother 9y ago
If you're going to quote someone you should really post what they said.
The short answer is: We want to build the first truly 21st-century city.
The longer answer is we launched Sidewalk with the broad belief that if we combined the best in urban planning and design with the latest in technology and open digital infrastructure, we could meaningfully improve quality of life for people in cities. But one of the big challenges we saw was that no single city in the world could really stand out as a model how to do that. That’s what we hope to achieve with Waterfront Toronto: neighborhoods that pilot ideas, new and old, to solve big urban problems that cities everywhere are facing.
Of course, we are not going to build the whole thing ourselves, because real neighborhoods can never be completely planned. We’re going to need to work with all kinds of partners and groups in Toronto and beyond. We see our role with Waterfront Toronto as trying to put in place some of the underlying infrastructure — things like people-first street designs, an energy system that could one day be climate positive, buildings that can adapt to new uses. On top of those systems, all kinds of local innovators, civic groups, academics, etc, will fill in the details will their ideas and creations.
Sidewalk Toronto is our main focus. But there are also areas where we think real innovation is possible today that no one is working on yet, and when we find those opportunities we incubate companies to take them on. For example, we incubated a spin-off company called Cityblock Health that now works to improve health care delivered to low-income urban populations.
- madeofpalk 9y agoParent quote provided a very accurate summary. There's actually nothing of substance in that quote, and it certainly doesn't answer the question: what does Sidewalk Labs actually do?
- naasking 9y agoFrom that quote, I got that Sidewalk Labs is intended to create an environment to foster development of innovative ideas, particularly in the space of modern living with tech. Is that not a sufficient description? Xerox PARC for modern living.
- s4vi0r 9y agoI think that's a _very_ generous interpretation of the comment.
- naasking 9y agoI don't think so: > we launched Sidewalk with the broad belief that if we combined the best in urban planning and design with the latest in technology and open digital infrastructure, we could meaningfully improve quality of life for people in cities [...] That’s what we hope to achieve with Waterfront Toronto: neighborhoods that pilot ideas, new and old, to solve big urban problems that cities everywhere are facing. [...] We see our role with Waterfront Toronto as trying to put in place some of the underlying infrastructure [...] On top of those systems, all kinds of local innovators, civic groups, academics, etc, will fill in the details will their ideas and creations. How is this meaningfully different from what I said? Suppose we rewound time to before cloud infrastructure like AWS and Google Cloud existed, and Google came out with App Engine saying, "we put in place the underlying infrastructure so people can build useful things on it". And people just keep asking, "but what does it do?" In both cases, the answer seems to be that it provides a platform for other people to implement their own innovative ideas. Given it's Google, this neighbourhood will probably provide ubiquitous wifi and power availability, fiber internet everywhere, and the "livable city" constraint means it will be a walkable space, so few cars, if any. I'm sure there will be plenty of other useful infrastructure I haven't even thought of.
- joncrane 9y agoQ: What does it DO? A: It's intended to.... Those are two different things.
- naasking 9y agoIt doesn't do anything yet, the project hasn't even started.
- burner5632 9y agoFrom your quote, I got that you work for Alphabet.
- bitmapbrother 9y agoIf that's your interpretation then fine, but at least let the user make their own inference based on what was actually said instead of a heavily edited version.