8 ms·

Tomorrow's cities: Google's Toronto city built 'from the internet up'

118 points by adzicg 8y ago

walterbell 8y ago
(repost) NYCLU and Columbia University have a 2016 video (starts at 2:50) about the corporate origins and privacy policy of Google's LinkNYC surveillance kiosks in Manhattan: https://livestream.com/internetsociety/hopeconf/videos/130816888 https://livestream.com/internetsociety/hopeconf/videos/13081... Village Voice covered the topic, https://www.villagevoice.com/2016/07/06/google-is-transforming-nycs-payphones-into-a-personalized-propaganda-engine/ https://www.villagevoice.com/2016/07/06/google-is-transformi... This freedom to opt out entirely is also the last argument that spokespeople for LinkNYC and the city itself fall back upon when challenged with privacy concerns: If you don’t like it, you’re welcome not to use it. It’s a disheartening place to land, especially when discussing infrastructure that’s supposed to be serving people who aren’t served otherwise. To Moglen, it’s simply an unacceptable conclusion. “That’s what they want us to believe, that we have a choice between isolation and monitored connecting,” he says. “Those are not adequate choices in a 21st-century world: We are designing the net to track you — if you don’t like it, don’t use it. The human race is shifting to a fully surveilled and monitored superorganism — if you don’t like that, stop being human. That’s a poor outcome. The United States is a society that was based around the idea that human beings can have liberty. So give us liberty! And don’t tell us that otherwise we can have the death of the net.
- marricks 8y ago
  The idea that cities would offer themselves up for companies with live off user data is so disturbing. Why not give them a whole cities data, I'm sure they could solve it's problems! This is so emblematic of the current times. Corporate power has run amok and increasingly people are suckered into thinking they'll solve our problems. There so many things we already have enough data to act on, college debt is going to crush the next generation, middle class wages have been stagnant for 30 years, money is continuing to concentrate to the select few giving them unmatched powers in politics... we can act on any one of those things for the cost of the tax break just passed! That isn't the way the wind is blowing though, apparently the only road to better our lives is just surrendering more and more power to corporations who know so much better than us, and whatever tools we elect, how to solve our woes.
  - jimmaswell 8y ago
    >college debt is going to crush the next generation I'm not really convinced. There's income-based repayment and other options for federal loans if you can't afford payments. You can even pay nothing for a while, and after that, income-based payments will be affordable even with a minimum wage job. All this assuming you couldn't find anything better with your degree.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - jedberg 8y ago
      When you take advantage of those programs, the loan servicer doesn’t just say, “well looks like we’re gonna have to take less money on this one!” The government makes up the difference. They pay the part you’re not paying using tax dollars. How sustainable do you think those programs are when the majority of your working citizens need subsidy?
      - GLjEI4YbnGD27LB 8y ago
        I mean, everyone should get subsidies so they can get Tulips. Tulips are necessary status symbol.
      - jimmaswell 8y ago
        Compared to fully subsidized higher education, as is the norm in some other places, I don't think student loans ending up partially subsidized is inherently unsustainable.
        marricks 8y ago
        How fucked up is it that our only tenable solution involves paying banks extra money through interest rather than just having the government pay it directly? It's more inefficient, but of course makes the banking lobby plenty happy...
- jen729w 8y ago
  That Village Voice article is well worth a read, thanks. “They are working hard to get you to behave true to your statistical profile, and in doing so they reduce your spontaneity, your anomalous behavior, your human agency, as they try to get you to conform to the most marketable probable outcome.”
- bogomipz 8y ago
  The Hope Conference link you posted is very informative. It is maybe one of the most detailed discussions I have seen regarding LinkNYC. I would highly recommend watching it. The Voice article is excellent as well. Thanks for sharing.
cryptoz 8y ago
Google seems to be all over the map on this one. I would have thought that minimalism would be a good concept when building to reduce consumption; but rather, Google is going all-out with an enormously large and complex proposal it seems. And it is full of contradictions. It's also tone-deaf and reeks of a 'we know better than you' attitude, which is something Google needs to not fan the flames of. > The area will have plenty of sensors collecting data - from traffic, noise and air quality - and monitoring the performance of the electric grid and waste collection. ... > Sidewalk Labs told the BBC that the sensors will not be used to monitor and collect information on citizens, rather it will be used to allow governments to be flexible about how neighbourhoods are used. Those two sentences are not compatible. The sensors will be used to observe - surveil - citizens in cars, citizens talking and at the same time, won't be used to monitor or collect information about citizens? How? Does Google have any plans to describe how they will eliminate human-spoken conversations from their noise detection? Such work can be done. Will they do it? That seems like Problem #1 to address: Google claims they will shove microphones along the streets everywhere but "promise us they won't listen to you"........okay? I don't buy it for a second. Talk to us about it, at least, and don't just say "we promise not to monitor human speech" and leave it at that. This is a hugely important conversation and Google is ignoring it. You can't just plaster public space with corporate surveillance tools and then walk around whistling and ignoring the huge social movement against your never-ending privacy invasion. > What is clear is that green will be top of the agenda None of the proposal sounds green to me. The amount of effort that will go into building it seems likely to offset any gains it would save over time through pollution reduction, etc. The entire thing sounds like it would need new factories, new dedicated infrastructure, and none of it is remotely green-sounding. Where will all of this stuff come from? Is it truly better and less pollutant than an old-world, more simple solution might be? I'm hopeful for Sidewalk Labs. But it seems like the Reddit Redesign to me: making every single obvious mistake that you could make, while the outside world yells at you "please reddit don't be digg 2.0! please Google don't make a massive dystopian total-surveillance society! please!)
- studio_monolith 8y ago
  You honestly can't comprehend how to collect data without collecting individual citizen information?
ve55 8y ago
This brings up some good points about why a philosophy of "If you don't like it (certain surveillance technology), just don't use those products" will be increasingly more difficult to rationalize. It's already borderline-impossible as not having things like a cell phone and an Internet connection (which tracks you) would already be a significant burden on anyone just trying to go about the basic needs of a modern adult life in a country like the US or Canada. This seems like a good place that GDPR could help consumers out - but how far can it be taken? What if I don't consent for the sidewalk to track me, the cars near me to film me and record me so that they can drive autonomously, the CCTV cameras and microphones near every intersection to record me and run facial recognition on me, and so on. It seems the only way to not be tracked is to not exist. I hope that we eventually attain some great regulations in this area that really tackle these problems in the areas that are most pressing and difficult to regulate. Would be wonderful to see some progress within the next few years in this area, perhaps GDPR will set the stage here.
remir 8y ago
Mr Minnan-Wong, who has not personally attended the two public meetings that Sidewalk has held so far, is not convinced. "I've heard that the meetings are very slick productions but that they don't go far in addressing the concerns held by members of the public, who want to know the details of what is in the agreement." I admit Sidewalk's approach is a bit questionable here, but why not go to their meetings and ask questions instead of "I heard this and that"?
- oneplusone 8y ago
  Because Sidewalk has avoided answering those questions. If you go to the meeting all they will say is that "we don't know" The meetings have been a giant waste of time.
  - notatoad 8y ago
    Have you actually been to a meeting and attempted to ask questions? Or are you just repeating the same hearsay as the guy in the article is?
    - JeremyBanks 8y ago
      I went to the first meeting and felt they did a pretty good job responding to concerns. There were some protesters outside before the event, expressing concerns about affordable housing, but by the end of the meeting, after a bit of back-and-forth in the Q&A, it looked like even they felt they were being taken seriously.
    - oneplusone 8y ago
      I have attended the meetings yes. We no nothing more than we did when this was first announced.
ilaksh 8y ago
We definitely want cities to become a high technology in my opinion. But we need to do it in a way that maintains privacy and allows ordinary people to participate. My question for these people would be how can we audit the systems for privacy concerns, and how exactly would one create a development that plugs into this smart city. I believe ultimately this can result in a much improved city. But since they seem to not be answering those questions I mentioned appropriately at the moment and they are so important, I think that all legal or other pressures available should be applied until good answers come out. To me the current activity seems to have completely subverted government and the public trust. Since government tends to be obsolete, I can see how that might be a tendency. But I think the solution will need to eventually be a high tech government rather than a bunch of secret dealings that bypass an outdated one.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
I'm originally from Toronto and I find this concept absolutely horrific. First - to give some self-serving private enterprise such leeway in our communities - can you imagine 'McDonalds' creating an entire neighbourhood to server their interests of fast food? "Hey, everything is centered around food deliver machines, delivering healthy, happy food quickly!" Second - Google has shown that they are remarkably out of touch with social reality of communities. Even their product attempts in social - Google+ for example, it's like they fail to understand really what they are doing, and focus everything around an algorithm. Even when governments get into major urban planning they 'screw it up' - the suburbs of Toronto have 'wide streets' and 'plenty of green' and 'highways' but they have absolutely no culture or community. TO suburbs are designed for box stores, starbuckses, Olive Gardens and car sales lots. Communities are built around people and culture, the notion that they want to build something 'from the internet up' is laughable and scary. And to wit - we don't even know what that specifically means. They've just committed to doing something 'Googly'. This kind of futurism/utopianism has been tried so often, have a look at any of the old school world expos. When all is said and done, we generally prefer to opt to live in classical old-timey communities like mid-sized European cities (and from other places with history), where technology is added to solve specific problems, not the other way around.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Yes, all that. Even more concerning? The pattern seems to be that Google refuses to learn from any of its learn experiences (aka mistakes). But politicians are easily charmed, and desperate communities (under-served by their elected officials) easily seduced.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    The waterfront ridings seem to continue to vote for people who promise things which they are completely incapable of offering. My only explanation for it is that they don't want anything done at all, if it's to be done through politics. I would personally prefer measures to reduce the (negative) impact of government on cost of living, to measures which inherently increase it, but voices like mine tend to be crowded out by "urbanists" and "technologists" who think they know precisely what is best for all of us.
walshemj 8y ago
Sounds like some of Milton Keyenes ideas from the 60's but higher tech :-) Brazil and some South America countries where also into fusing cybernetics and city design Though when MK w built it was planned with different housing types some where for workers some for supervisors and some for executives.
headsoup 8y ago
It looks exactly how I'd imagine a tech firm would design it. Focused on system automation and data and not so much the tech debt being created.
microcolonel 8y ago
Thank god I'm moving away just as they're moving in. Why is Google not content to have its nose in its own customers' business? Hopefully if I get some unincorporated land somewhere in New England, I won't have the "urbanists" knocking on my door with a bill to pay for all the "urbanism" they've so graciously done for me.
anewhnaccount2 8y ago
How are heated paths green? Just think how fast they're increasing entropy. They're just pumping out waste heat.
- matthewmacleod 8y ago
  Well, there could be a few reasons. Perhaps they’re heated using waste heat from other municipal systems. Or maybe the carbon emissions from heating them are lower than the equivalent carbon emissions for producing, shipping and distributing road salt. Or the energy could be supplied from carbon-neutral sources.
Dowwie 8y ago
Elected officials have to answer to an organized constituency. If the people of Toronto want more than an Alphabet City, they will have to advance an organized agenda.
reledi 8y ago
I wonder if they also plan on collecting urine to use as fertilizer for farming.
nonkentuckian 8y ago
Libertarianism invariably ends as Feudalism.
AzzieElbab 8y ago
I like how weather in every sketch is warm and sunny. If Google could do that they can build whatever they want
asdgonio 8y ago
Why do all these tech people think self driving cars make sense for urban transportation? I've seen the same thing from Elon Musk, who has the positively brain-dead idea of digging new subway tunnels and then filling them full of cars. They could use established technology that serves an urban population brilliantly, like a subway, but instead they propose even more cars as a solution to traffic problems. It makes no sense. Self-driving cars have turned into just another buzzword, which is a damn shame.
- kankroc 8y ago
  The subway forces me to be uncomfortable for 15-25 minutes. I'd much rather be sitting alone in my car if it wasn't so expensive. They simply understood that people won't give up their comfort. Keep in mind that there isn't much money to be made selling subway cars.
andechs 8y ago
There's this naive feeling that "data can solve everything". We already have great data and advice in the city of Toronto. So many times, we've had data oriented recommendations from city staff entirely ignored by the executive. (1) Proposed bike lanes are being moved to a side street, against recommendations & usage data - for an extra $20M https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/02/26/yonge-st-bike-lane-battle-returns-to-city-hall.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/02/26/yonge-st-bike-la... (2) Many restauranteurs claiming their business is down 50% plus, despite credit & debit receipts showing an increase. (During a Pilot project to decrease variability in LRT times & increase speed of the busiest surface line in North America) https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/transportation/2018/02/16/spending-on-king-st-up-since-streetcar-pilot-began.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/transportation/2018/02/16/s... (3) Building a $3.3B one stop subway instead of a LRT that would better serve the community. https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2018/02/06/updated-scarborough-subway-costs-will-be-ready-but-not-made-public-before-the-next-election.html https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2018/02/06/updated-sc... And we want to allow a private company to collect data that has a vested interest in nothing but advertising. Our issue with governance in our cities has never been lack of data, it's lack of leadership and poor NIMBY decision making.

118 points by adzicg 8y ago

(repost) NYCLU and Columbia University have a 2016 video (starts at 2:50) about the corporate origins and privacy policy of Google's LinkNYC surveillance kiosks in Manhattan: https://livestream.com/internetsociety/hopeconf/videos/130816888 https://livestream.com/internetsociety/hopeconf/videos/13081... Village Voice covered the topic, https://www.villagevoice.com/2016/07/06/google-is-transforming-nycs-payphones-into-a-personalized-propaganda-engine/ https://www.villagevoice.com/2016/07/06/google-is-transformi... This freedom to opt out entirely is also the last argument that spokespeople for LinkNYC and the city itself fall back upon when challenged with privacy concerns: If you don’t like it, you’re welcome not to use it. It’s a disheartening place to land, especially when discussing infrastructure that’s supposed to be serving people who aren’t served otherwise. To Moglen, it’s simply an unacceptable conclusion. “That’s what they want us to believe, that we have a choice between isolation and monitored connecting,” he says. “Those are not adequate choices in a 21st-century world: We are designing the net to track you — if you don’t like it, don’t use it. The human race is shifting to a fully surveilled and monitored superorganism — if you don’t like that, stop being human. That’s a poor outcome. The United States is a society that was based around the idea that human beings can have liberty. So give us liberty! And don’t tell us that otherwise we can have the death of the net.

marricks 8y ago
The idea that cities would offer themselves up for companies with live off user data is so disturbing. Why not give them a whole cities data, I'm sure they could solve it's problems! This is so emblematic of the current times. Corporate power has run amok and increasingly people are suckered into thinking they'll solve our problems. There so many things we already have enough data to act on, college debt is going to crush the next generation, middle class wages have been stagnant for 30 years, money is continuing to concentrate to the select few giving them unmatched powers in politics... we can act on any one of those things for the cost of the tax break just passed! That isn't the way the wind is blowing though, apparently the only road to better our lives is just surrendering more and more power to corporations who know so much better than us, and whatever tools we elect, how to solve our woes.
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  >college debt is going to crush the next generation I'm not really convinced. There's income-based repayment and other options for federal loans if you can't afford payments. You can even pay nothing for a while, and after that, income-based payments will be affordable even with a minimum wage job. All this assuming you couldn't find anything better with your degree.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jedberg 8y ago
    When you take advantage of those programs, the loan servicer doesn’t just say, “well looks like we’re gonna have to take less money on this one!” The government makes up the difference. They pay the part you’re not paying using tax dollars. How sustainable do you think those programs are when the majority of your working citizens need subsidy?
    - GLjEI4YbnGD27LB 8y ago
      I mean, everyone should get subsidies so they can get Tulips. Tulips are necessary status symbol.
    - jimmaswell 8y ago
      Compared to fully subsidized higher education, as is the norm in some other places, I don't think student loans ending up partially subsidized is inherently unsustainable.
      - marricks 8y ago
        How fucked up is it that our only tenable solution involves paying banks extra money through interest rather than just having the government pay it directly? It's more inefficient, but of course makes the banking lobby plenty happy...
jen729w 8y ago
That Village Voice article is well worth a read, thanks. “They are working hard to get you to behave true to your statistical profile, and in doing so they reduce your spontaneity, your anomalous behavior, your human agency, as they try to get you to conform to the most marketable probable outcome.”
bogomipz 8y ago
The Hope Conference link you posted is very informative. It is maybe one of the most detailed discussions I have seen regarding LinkNYC. I would highly recommend watching it. The Voice article is excellent as well. Thanks for sharing.

cryptoz 8y ago

Google seems to be all over the map on this one. I would have thought that minimalism would be a good concept when building to reduce consumption; but rather, Google is going all-out with an enormously large and complex proposal it seems. And it is full of contradictions. It's also tone-deaf and reeks of a 'we know better than you' attitude, which is something Google needs to not fan the flames of. > The area will have plenty of sensors collecting data - from traffic, noise and air quality - and monitoring the performance of the electric grid and waste collection. ... > Sidewalk Labs told the BBC that the sensors will not be used to monitor and collect information on citizens, rather it will be used to allow governments to be flexible about how neighbourhoods are used. Those two sentences are not compatible. The sensors will be used to observe - surveil - citizens in cars, citizens talking and at the same time, won't be used to monitor or collect information about citizens? How? Does Google have any plans to describe how they will eliminate human-spoken conversations from their noise detection? Such work can be done. Will they do it? That seems like Problem #1 to address: Google claims they will shove microphones along the streets everywhere but "promise us they won't listen to you"........okay? I don't buy it for a second. Talk to us about it, at least, and don't just say "we promise not to monitor human speech" and leave it at that. This is a hugely important conversation and Google is ignoring it. You can't just plaster public space with corporate surveillance tools and then walk around whistling and ignoring the huge social movement against your never-ending privacy invasion. > What is clear is that green will be top of the agenda None of the proposal sounds green to me. The amount of effort that will go into building it seems likely to offset any gains it would save over time through pollution reduction, etc. The entire thing sounds like it would need new factories, new dedicated infrastructure, and none of it is remotely green-sounding. Where will all of this stuff come from? Is it truly better and less pollutant than an old-world, more simple solution might be? I'm hopeful for Sidewalk Labs. But it seems like the Reddit Redesign to me: making every single obvious mistake that you could make, while the outside world yells at you "please reddit don't be digg 2.0! please Google don't make a massive dystopian total-surveillance society! please!)

studio_monolith 8y ago
You honestly can't comprehend how to collect data without collecting individual citizen information?

ve55 8y ago

This brings up some good points about why a philosophy of "If you don't like it (certain surveillance technology), just don't use those products" will be increasingly more difficult to rationalize. It's already borderline-impossible as not having things like a cell phone and an Internet connection (which tracks you) would already be a significant burden on anyone just trying to go about the basic needs of a modern adult life in a country like the US or Canada. This seems like a good place that GDPR could help consumers out - but how far can it be taken? What if I don't consent for the sidewalk to track me, the cars near me to film me and record me so that they can drive autonomously, the CCTV cameras and microphones near every intersection to record me and run facial recognition on me, and so on. It seems the only way to not be tracked is to not exist. I hope that we eventually attain some great regulations in this area that really tackle these problems in the areas that are most pressing and difficult to regulate. Would be wonderful to see some progress within the next few years in this area, perhaps GDPR will set the stage here.

remir 8y ago

Mr Minnan-Wong, who has not personally attended the two public meetings that Sidewalk has held so far, is not convinced. "I've heard that the meetings are very slick productions but that they don't go far in addressing the concerns held by members of the public, who want to know the details of what is in the agreement." I admit Sidewalk's approach is a bit questionable here, but why not go to their meetings and ask questions instead of "I heard this and that"?

oneplusone 8y ago
Because Sidewalk has avoided answering those questions. If you go to the meeting all they will say is that "we don't know" The meetings have been a giant waste of time.
- notatoad 8y ago
  Have you actually been to a meeting and attempted to ask questions? Or are you just repeating the same hearsay as the guy in the article is?
  - JeremyBanks 8y ago
    I went to the first meeting and felt they did a pretty good job responding to concerns. There were some protesters outside before the event, expressing concerns about affordable housing, but by the end of the meeting, after a bit of back-and-forth in the Q&A, it looked like even they felt they were being taken seriously.
  - oneplusone 8y ago
    I have attended the meetings yes. We no nothing more than we did when this was first announced.

ilaksh 8y ago

We definitely want cities to become a high technology in my opinion. But we need to do it in a way that maintains privacy and allows ordinary people to participate. My question for these people would be how can we audit the systems for privacy concerns, and how exactly would one create a development that plugs into this smart city. I believe ultimately this can result in a much improved city. But since they seem to not be answering those questions I mentioned appropriately at the moment and they are so important, I think that all legal or other pressures available should be applied until good answers come out. To me the current activity seems to have completely subverted government and the public trust. Since government tends to be obsolete, I can see how that might be a tendency. But I think the solution will need to eventually be a high tech government rather than a bunch of secret dealings that bypass an outdated one.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

I'm originally from Toronto and I find this concept absolutely horrific. First - to give some self-serving private enterprise such leeway in our communities - can you imagine 'McDonalds' creating an entire neighbourhood to server their interests of fast food? "Hey, everything is centered around food deliver machines, delivering healthy, happy food quickly!" Second - Google has shown that they are remarkably out of touch with social reality of communities. Even their product attempts in social - Google+ for example, it's like they fail to understand really what they are doing, and focus everything around an algorithm. Even when governments get into major urban planning they 'screw it up' - the suburbs of Toronto have 'wide streets' and 'plenty of green' and 'highways' but they have absolutely no culture or community. TO suburbs are designed for box stores, starbuckses, Olive Gardens and car sales lots. Communities are built around people and culture, the notion that they want to build something 'from the internet up' is laughable and scary. And to wit - we don't even know what that specifically means. They've just committed to doing something 'Googly'. This kind of futurism/utopianism has been tried so often, have a look at any of the old school world expos. When all is said and done, we generally prefer to opt to live in classical old-timey communities like mid-sized European cities (and from other places with history), where technology is added to solve specific problems, not the other way around.

chiefalchemist 8y ago
Yes, all that. Even more concerning? The pattern seems to be that Google refuses to learn from any of its learn experiences (aka mistakes). But politicians are easily charmed, and desperate communities (under-served by their elected officials) easily seduced.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  The waterfront ridings seem to continue to vote for people who promise things which they are completely incapable of offering. My only explanation for it is that they don't want anything done at all, if it's to be done through politics. I would personally prefer measures to reduce the (negative) impact of government on cost of living, to measures which inherently increase it, but voices like mine tend to be crowded out by "urbanists" and "technologists" who think they know precisely what is best for all of us.

walshemj 8y ago

Sounds like some of Milton Keyenes ideas from the 60's but higher tech :-) Brazil and some South America countries where also into fusing cybernetics and city design Though when MK w built it was planned with different housing types some where for workers some for supervisors and some for executives.

headsoup 8y ago

It looks exactly how I'd imagine a tech firm would design it. Focused on system automation and data and not so much the tech debt being created.

microcolonel 8y ago

Thank god I'm moving away just as they're moving in. Why is Google not content to have its nose in its own customers' business? Hopefully if I get some unincorporated land somewhere in New England, I won't have the "urbanists" knocking on my door with a bill to pay for all the "urbanism" they've so graciously done for me.

anewhnaccount2 8y ago

How are heated paths green? Just think how fast they're increasing entropy. They're just pumping out waste heat.

matthewmacleod 8y ago
Well, there could be a few reasons. Perhaps they’re heated using waste heat from other municipal systems. Or maybe the carbon emissions from heating them are lower than the equivalent carbon emissions for producing, shipping and distributing road salt. Or the energy could be supplied from carbon-neutral sources.

Dowwie 8y ago

Elected officials have to answer to an organized constituency. If the people of Toronto want more than an Alphabet City, they will have to advance an organized agenda.

reledi 8y ago

I wonder if they also plan on collecting urine to use as fertilizer for farming.

nonkentuckian 8y ago

Libertarianism invariably ends as Feudalism.

AzzieElbab 8y ago

I like how weather in every sketch is warm and sunny. If Google could do that they can build whatever they want

asdgonio 8y ago

Why do all these tech people think self driving cars make sense for urban transportation? I've seen the same thing from Elon Musk, who has the positively brain-dead idea of digging new subway tunnels and then filling them full of cars. They could use established technology that serves an urban population brilliantly, like a subway, but instead they propose even more cars as a solution to traffic problems. It makes no sense. Self-driving cars have turned into just another buzzword, which is a damn shame.

kankroc 8y ago
The subway forces me to be uncomfortable for 15-25 minutes. I'd much rather be sitting alone in my car if it wasn't so expensive. They simply understood that people won't give up their comfort. Keep in mind that there isn't much money to be made selling subway cars.

andechs 8y ago

There's this naive feeling that "data can solve everything". We already have great data and advice in the city of Toronto. So many times, we've had data oriented recommendations from city staff entirely ignored by the executive. (1) Proposed bike lanes are being moved to a side street, against recommendations & usage data - for an extra $20M https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/02/26/yonge-st-bike-lane-battle-returns-to-city-hall.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/02/26/yonge-st-bike-la... (2) Many restauranteurs claiming their business is down 50% plus, despite credit & debit receipts showing an increase. (During a Pilot project to decrease variability in LRT times & increase speed of the busiest surface line in North America) https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/transportation/2018/02/16/spending-on-king-st-up-since-streetcar-pilot-began.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/transportation/2018/02/16/s... (3) Building a $3.3B one stop subway instead of a LRT that would better serve the community. https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2018/02/06/updated-scarborough-subway-costs-will-be-ready-but-not-made-public-before-the-next-election.html https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2018/02/06/updated-sc... And we want to allow a private company to collect data that has a vested interest in nothing but advertising. Our issue with governance in our cities has never been lack of data, it's lack of leadership and poor NIMBY decision making.