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Google Is Building a City of the Future – Would Anyone Want to Live There?
- unit91 8y ago> It could be the coolest new neighborhood on the planet—or a peek into the Orwellian metropolis that knows everything you did last night. A refreshingly descriptive subtitle!
- ggggtez 8y agoThis article has been posted here a few times. I understand people hate FAANG, but let's be honest about the fact that this is a fluff piece, and that having smog sensors built into a few city blocks is not at all similar. There are so many legitimate things to be concerned about, and this has got to be about the least concerning thing out there.
- unit91 8y agoDid you read the article? Here's one paragraph: > In Toronto, Sidewalk sketches out a picture of a neighborhood where intelligent “pay-as-you-throw” garbage chutes separate out recyclables and charge households by waste output; where hyperlocal weather sensors could detect a coming squall and heat up a snow-melting sidewalk. Apps would tell residents when the Adirondack chairs on the waterfront are open, and neighbors would crowdsource approvals for block-party permits, giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down based on the noise the gathering was expected to produce. Traffic signals could auto-calibrate to ease pedestrian congestion during public events, or to ensure a smooth rush hour. The data from such systems would feed back into the city, which would constantly learn, optimizing its own operations from month to month, year to year. Sidewalk promises “the most measurable community in the world.” "The most measurable community in the world". That's well beyond "smog sensors built into a few city blocks".
- darpa_escapee 8y ago> The data from such systems would feed back into the city, which would constantly learn, optimizing its own operations from month to month, year to year. All so we can better extract a profit from our u̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ citizens.
- ggggtez 8y ago1984 was about totalitarianism. You're talking about being annoyed that your garbage will be done by micropayments instead of a flat fee. If you can't see the difference then you should read up on this place called USSR.
- s2g 8y agoIf you can't see that this sort of thing is headed towards the surveillance state of 1984 then you need to wake up. There is a constant push towards more and more government and corporate surveillance.
- krageon 8y agoAny good totalitarian state implements the most ubiquitous surveillance they can. When the framework for that is already present, it becomes much easier to birth something like that. It's very easy to avoid creating a fertile breeding ground for totalitarian governance, and a factor of that's not having ubiquitous surveillance.
- forgottenpass 8y ago>neighbors would crowdsource approvals for block-party permits Oh boy, a digital HOA. Wow, Google, I can't wait!
- theandrewbailey 8y agoOne day, you come back to your apartment. It's locked, and won't accept your AUTHENTICATION_METHOD. (Your technocrat landlords despise plain old metal keys to open doors. What are you, a peasant?) There's a note on the door saying that you've violated the terms of service and that your account has been terminated. You're locked away from all your stuff! You try to get some answers from the robot downstairs, but it's unsympathetic to your situation, and it won't listen to an unperson.
- jacquesm 8y ago> You're locked away from all your stuff! No, that's not how it will go. It will go like this: one day you come home to your apartment, it's locked and won't accept your AUTHENTICATION_METHOD. The noise causes the door to be opened and the new tenant asks you to be quiet in the hallway. Your stuff was moved out and disposed off, after your digital media were scanned for patentable ideas (you really should have read the fine print). Your cat has been uploaded and is fortunately still available as a construct so you really have nothing to complain about (that was a courtesy).
- chocolatebunny 8y agoI can't figure out if the cat thing is a Douglas Adams thing or a Kurt Vonnegut thing.
- arbitrary_name 8y agoMore of a Charles Strauss thing maybe?
- jacquesm 8y agoAt least get the man's name right, he's a member here. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross
- jacquesm 8y agohttp://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=56 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=56
- lainga 8y ago>Sidestepping democratic processes with "data-driven decision making" to make massive urban projects happen By God, I get it now! Google have hired Robert Moses!
- everdev 8y agoWe build products and companies from scratch, no reason not to try it with cities too.
- FLUX-YOU 8y agoA city needs to stick around longer than a failed startup, even if the city is doomed to fail too.
- coldtea 8y agoHow do you think our cities were built? Especially in the US, where even the oldest is 1/10 the lifespan of some ancient buildings in my country.
- indemnity 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijlmermeer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijlmermeer
- arcaster 8y agoDoes citizenship imply unlimited kool-aid?
- dang 8y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
- Isamu 8y agoThis is about Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet. It's an interesting project. Read more about the project here: https://sidewalktoronto.ca/ https://sidewalktoronto.ca/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidewalk_Labs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidewalk_Labs More: >Sidewalk Labs responded to a Request For Proposals issued in March 2017 by Waterfront Toronto to identify an innovation and funding partner. Following a rigorous evaluation process involving several local and international firms, Waterfront Toronto selected Sidewalk Labs. >Sidewalk Toronto will begin with a new neighbourhood, called Quayside, located at Parliament Slip, just southeast of Downtown Toronto. Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto aim to bring the innovations advanced at Quayside to scale across the Eastern Waterfront, more than 325 hectares (800 acres) that represent one of North America’s largest areas of underdeveloped urban land.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago>In Toronto, Sidewalk sketches out a picture of a neighborhood where intelligent “pay-as-you-throw” garbage chutes separate out recyclables and charge households by waste output I don't understand why the "city of the future" types have such a fetish for pay per use. It either winds up being cheap enough that nobody cares or if it's expensive enough for people to care it will be a serious drag on poor people. Sure you can come up with various voucher and aid systems but those have administrative overhead and their own unique downsides. It's better to just ensure that utilities (like trash pickup and tap water) are so cheap they're basically free and just eat the cost of the over-users because there's less harm in that than any other option.
- unit91 8y agoYeah, I also wondered How does this help? Pay per what? Cubic foot? Pound? Contiguous item? A box full of paper is much cheaper to dispose of than that same box full of mercury. As it stands, my city (and pretty much everyone else's) averages the total cost and we already pay as we go (per curbside container). I just don't see what problem this solves...
- dsl 8y agoRich people who eat out every night don't have to subsidize the commoners throwing away an empty box of pasta.
- Animats 8y agoThat's a good point. This is the same problem the Internet of Things had - too much sensing with too little value. Most of what they're talking about doesn't do anything. It just watches.
- seangrogg 8y agoI agree largely with the sentiment, but I do think that "pay-per-use" broadly is useful for any habit that you want others to be cognizant of (and, through awareness, reduce). I do find this "pay-as-you-throw" concept off-putting as I don't like cooking; take-out bags and food wrappers are something I frequently dispose of. But if it was something I was more cognizant of I'd likely ask for less in the first place (don't need a bag for one item) or otherwise put pressure on the business (washable/returnable items) where doing so now would just be unnecessary and impractical. That being said, being that many things such as waste, water, etc. are largely unavoidable I think providing a general credit such that it shouldn't harm average users is entirely practical. Bonus points if it's a transactional credit - you could sell your excess waste allotment to your neighbor at below regulatory rate if you're not using it.
- Cuuugi 8y agoI wonder how much of a concern the new conservative Ontario government is?
- maerF0x0 8y agocould you link to something that shows what you're referring to? eg: is there some action or platform that you think would be a concern?
- 52-6F-62 8y agoThe Fords (when Rob was mayor) attempted to forcibly take the land from the Provincial and Federal governments (by way of their investment in Waterfront Toronto—the company working with Sidewalk Labs on this project). The Provincial government at the time continually blocked them out. Now Ford is premier. It's unknown if he'll set his eyes back on his grand plan. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17492065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17492065
- perardi 8y agoIt depends on how much power the provincial government has here, and how the relationship with the city government evolves. The mayor and the new premier are both members of the Progressive Conservative party, but John Tory and Doug Ford are…they have rather different temperaments. Ford is, to risk oversimplifying, Trump-esque, and not easy to predict yet. This could either become a traditional "public-private parternships are great" pitch, or a weird populist backlash against big government and big business. (Who knows. Ford and the anti-gentrifications folks might end up both being against this. But really, who knows at this point.)
- 52-6F-62 8y agoIt's also taking up the land in the Portlands area (used to work down there) where the Fords wanted to build a ferris wheel, megamall and.... monorail I wouldn't be overly surprised if they ran into snags. Ford has been known to hold a grudge. But that's just speculation. Haven't heard anything about it from the new government yet. For anyone unfamiliar with the area, it's largely undeveloped, home to warehousing, light industry, stockyards, and the Pinewood Film Studios (to the east end). https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/08/30/doug_fords_dream_waterfront_ferris_wheel_monorail_and_a_boatin_hotel.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/08/30/doug_fords_dream...
- mtgx 8y agoSo Google doesn't even have enough patience to grow a fiber internet business, but it has the patience to build a whole city and then support it for decades? What happens 5 years later after all the people have moved into it, but Google discovers that the project is not very profitable for them to maintain or that they can't achieve whatever objectives they were hoping to achieve with it? I'm guessing the #1 objective with this is to create a "role model" for a total surveillance panopticon type of city that governments around the world would then replicate, using its technologies. I'm also assuming this city would also get "upgrade" to having "always-on" wireless brain scanning technology in the future, so that the company can "better target" ads at you in every moment of your life.
- vimota 8y agoTorontonian here. I understand your concern, but my opinion is that its a worthwhile (contained) experiment in a space (urbanism) that could use some new information about approaches that work and don't work. In the hypothetical case you describe where Google decides to drop it - a case I find unlikely to be done as suddenly as you proposed if for nothing else but bad publicity - I could see the neighbourhood becoming a normal neighbourhood of Toronto with perhaps a cool extra things added. Currently it's essentially a dead industrial land in a great location that has been underused for too long, so the opportunity cost does not seem so high.
- Animats 8y agoSo Google doesn't even have enough patience to grow a fiber internet business, but it has the patience to build a whole city and then support it for decades? That's a real problem with Google. They lack follow-through outside their core business area. Their ISP projects, both fiber and wireless, ended after a few prototype neighborhood installations. Their robotics projects went nowhere. They bought Motorola and trashed it. City infrastructure has to be maintained for centuries. Google lacks that capability.
- s2g 8y agoThey raise prices. They start selling the data (oh wait it's google, just terrifying services based on their data). The abandon large amounts of costly hard to maintain infrastructure and the city crashes.
- greyfox 8y agoif google pays my rent and such i'll live there.
- cam3ham 8y agoconsidering the average price to own in Toronto is approaching $1M and rental vacancy is nearing 1% this comment sounds like beggars choosing.
- JauntTrooper 8y agoPerhaps it will be ad-subsidized. Watch 30 minutes of commercials for 10% off your rent that day.
- amelius 8y ago> Constant data collection via smartphones or sensors can make life smoother for civic leaders and residents, in everything from transit to garbage. No thanks.
- ravenstine 8y agoFor a company that makes over 90% of their revenue from advertising(often sleazy), I wonder what Google's real interest is in building a city. Actually, I don't really wonder. Why exactly would anyone trust Google to run a city? Or a country, once they get bored of cities? Most seasoned developers seem to have a very low level of trust with Google, and use their services with the awareness that either they'll receive the "f* you" style of customer support or lose access to their service entirely because Google has some new great ambition. Worse yet, public services simply become inaccessible because of a political view you expressed on YouTube.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoThey're a sibling company to Google, not under Google's umbrella directly. https://www.sidewalklabs.com/ https://www.sidewalklabs.com/
- wu2ad 8y agoCorporate structure technicality. The DNA of the company will still be the same.
- dsl 8y agoFor completely self-serving reasons Alphabet wants to diversify revenue. Bets are told they can't depend on advertising, because that only canabilizes the Google business.
- extralego 8y agoIt seems like the void left by a (hypothetically) decreasing advertising market coupled with Googles desire to actually grow might place a ton of stress on the societies that fall victim to this desperation. Obviously it will temporarily stimulate local economies in strange and sometimes positive ways, but a lot of their interest seems to focus on processes better handled by an elected committee. Google naturally has it’s eye on taking over government responsibilities. This is frightening to me. The incentives are no better aligned than they were with advertising. It sounds like a company that simply got way too big and now we will all pay the price.
- dv_dt 8y agoIt's interesting that Epcot is mentioned, but not the Disney companies later, more serious community building effort, Celebration. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/13/celebration-death-of-a-dream https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/13/celebration-de... I understand the tech portion is different, but post-analysis of Celebration seems to cast a lot of criticism on a disconnect between planning/execution vs actual resident desires and needs.
- dopamean 8y agoI've already permitted google to spy on me constantly. Why not just move into a place so they can literally watch my every move?
- cromulent 8y agoFreakonomics did a podcast a month ago with Dan Doctoroff, worth a listen if this interests you. http://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/sidewalk-labs/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/sidewalk-labs/
- ulfw 8y agoIf it's done like all Google projects, it'll be phenomenal, half-finished and then abandoned as engineers/leaders get bored and work on the next big thing. Meanwhile the city will rot away.
- lainga 8y ago"Google Sidewalk abandoned; residents given $500 credit to move to Google Neighborhoods in Tampa Bay" (June, 2021)
- debt 8y ago"it'll be phenomenal, half-finished and then abandoned as engineers/leaders get bored and work on the next big thing" You have just described every project at every large software company. However, important to note that usually "phenomenal" is an idea driven by all the non-engineer stakeholders.
- djhworld 8y agoI'm wondering if this city will actually be designed to host engineers, with an office campus on site so they can get to work easier without the hassle of traffic and having to lay on buses and the inevitible protests
- Tepix 8y agoIf cars (parking) were banned inside most areas of the city it could be interesting. An entire city optimized for bikes, ebikes and some public mass transport. Add a few self driving electric cars for the elderly.
- CNJ7654 8y agoDystopian surveillance state? Sign me up! I've wanted to rebel against one of those for years
- Isamu 8y agoHow to read this headline: Google -> Sidewalk Labs building -> designing city -> neighborhood future -> now
- _Microft 8y agoQuestion mark -> No (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... )
- levicole 8y agoSo, google is building a burbclave?
- binnesjohn 8y agoReally, is there anybody who still trust privacy violators like Google? - Bang out of order!
- 3pt14159 8y agoI live in Toronto. The problem with companies like Alphabet / Google / Sidewalk Labs building mini-cities is twofold. First, they lack the internal focus so they flake or sacrifice on things that no sane singular focussed entity would. For example Craig Nevill-Manning, head of Sidewalk Labs flaked on his talk at The Walrus' 15th year anniversary party titled The Walrus Talks The Future. This was a paid event, full of Canadian cultural elites, specifically aimed at talking about the future. "When someone shows you who they are believe them." If they cared about what we thought they would actually engage the people here that care. Second, they try to leverage existing internal competencies. Completely understandable, but it warps the outcome to solution mixes that aren't necessarily optimal for the people actually living in the city. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I don't want to live in a city where a techno-hammer international corporation has hammered its copentenczies here and there. I want to live in a human city where little decisions are made by little people. I want to live in a city where flowers hang from windows and where theres little bike paths and a nice mix of trees. Cobblestone streets. Community gardens and little shops and restaurants. Some Chinese, some French, some Italian. I'm not saying Google is necessary going to fuck up that area of Toronto. It might be great. But it's such a large project that I worry that it risks being another CityPlace. A soulless pocket mark on a diverse and increasingly interesting city.
- brailsafe 8y agoSo... you don't want it to become Vancouver in other words.
- Lenad 8y ago@brailsafe, would you mind to explain a bit more why Vancouver is like this?
- brailsafe 8y agoI was being a bit facetious here, but there is some truth to it. Though I can't pinpoint exactly why, Vancouver seems to have have developed into a very sanitized and homogeneous place. I don't know whether it's the cost of living or how many identical skyscrapers have been copy/pasted by the same developer, or how many swaths of older buildings and cultural landmarks have been bought up (or attempted to be bought up in the case of the Rio Theatre) and demolished to make way for very similar looking high rises. Many of these things seem to be coming together to subtract from any sense of character that the city might have had. My sense is that a sense of place is much stronger in various subcultures like skateboarding, but I think there is a stronger tendency for people to meet through an activity and then part ways only to schedule a new meeting a month later. It's a city that is simultaneously one of the most ethnically diverse places around, and culturally bland/white/rich/tasteless/pretentious/nofun. I do like this place, but I tend to think that the things I like are despite the city itself, and are often found in close proximity to the city rather than in it.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoIt is eerie how much that rendering looks like the city from Logan's Run. And as interesting as it is to imagine the city of the future, it is disquieting to think of it being designed to minimize the friction of monetizing the residents. But we know the best data comes from happy data cows.
- jeffwass 8y agoI was going to make a joke about tech ageism and Logan’s Run here, until seeing your comment that the rendering actually resembles it. Creepy.
- byebyetech 8y agoPrimates living in futurist cages will still be primates. Its time for us to realize that we are moving towards possible futures devoid of real progress. More sensors, cameras, fasters connections, unlimited entertainment will not help us become happier and prosperous society. We need to discuss real radical ideas and implement them: 1. World without political boundaries, weapons, pollution, carbon emissions. 2. Cheap or free healthcare. 3. Sustainable technologies. 4. Better Education. 5. Heal racial, political, class divides. Where is that future?
- jacquesm 8y agoIt's right around the corner. There are just a few minor roadblocks in the way of getting there: money in politics, a couple of hundred years of vested interests and very large corporations that would fight that future tooth and nail.
- iooi 8y ago> 1. World without political boundaries, weapons, pollution, carbon emissions. Oh, please. Without weapons? The first group to get a hold of them will be de-facto rulers -- by force.
- byebyetech 8y agoThats how primates think. Are we not going to progress beyond that logic?
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoWe also think that 1+1=2. Of course no social matter is as simple as this, but at the same time that increased complexity can not then be used as an excuse to try to argue that anything is possible - because it most certainly is not. In general, when a social system collapses unless everybody abides it - it's going to collapse. This is not something you can just 'progress beyond.' We are individuals, and always will be. And there is practically nothing that everybody, onto perpetuity, will always and forever agree on.
- 8y ago
- Apocryphon 8y agoThere's probably a social critique to be made about how Google is going all the way to Canada to build a city when there's so much that could be done to improve the urban situation in Silicon Valley. If they're going to do the Omnicorp Detroit thing, they could at least benefit the communities where the bulk of their employees work and live. Yes, yes, the Bay Area's politics are inherently intractable and Google has been active in shaping the future of Mountain View. But it still looks like that they chose Toronto because it'll give the highest chance for squeaky-clean marketing graphics, instead of doing something really bold and trying to disrupt an urban crisis.
- Illniyar 8y agoThe article seems to imply that Toronto contacted Google, not the other way around.
- Kalium 8y agoYou mean something bold, brave, and disruptive, that would benefit the communities their employees actually live and work in, like trying to build housing in Mountain View? I'm reasonably certain Google is already working on that one.
- beenBoutIT 8y agoTragic how tobacco killed off a visionary like Disney. These uncommon people who actually make a difference dying before they're done contributing is one of the greatest tragedies.
- jakebasile 8y agoI can't help but think of Alpha Complex. Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
- deepsun 8y agoWell, 50 million is not really "building a city". That would be enough for a few sidewalks and parks, but not for bringing up a new infrastructure network.
- timerol 8y agoNote that this is a small block of land. The article describes Quayside as "a dozen acres". 12 acres would make a square with side lengths of ~1/8th mile. About 2 blocks in Manhattan. I think $50 million is about the right amount for a handful of new buildings. The artistic render is useful to get a sense the scale involved.
- snambi 8y agoprobably another google campus with a bunch of hype around it.
- dev_dull 8y agoThey used to call these company towns and they turned out pretty awful in the long run. We’ll see if it’s different this time.
- mikejholly 8y agoProbably the same people who used to wear Google Glass to social events.
- dolguldur 8y agoIt’s just 12 acres Edit: oh, that’s the initial Quayside only. Afterwards it could get much bigger. https://sidewalktoronto.ca https://sidewalktoronto.ca
- mhb 8y agoWelcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16214066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16214066
- s2g 8y ago> What does a tech company know about running a real live city? Nothing, but they won't let that stop them. They will pack it with enough sensors to go full on dystopian nightmare and provide as little actual human support as possible. > intelligent “pay-as-you-throw” garbage chutes jesus, they really will find a way to ruin everything. > neighbors would crowdsource approvals for block-party permits, giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down based on the noise the gathering was expected to produce oh great, we can have those shitty neighborhood social networks cranked up to 10. oh and just imagine the HOAs! > few better places to have this conversation than Canada, a Western democracy that takes seriously debates over informational privacy and data ownership—and is known for managing to stay polite while discussing even hot-button civic issues. hopefully people wake up and become very very impolite towards these goddamn data companies. > Hitching up with tech companies that are flush with both cash and grand visions might be cities’ best chance to leap into the future, or at least to turbocharge their lagging districts Yeah, we need to give more power to corporations. Not less. We need fucking Larry running every aspect of our lives. > So far, the deal hasn’t exactly been a victory for transparency What a shock.
- singularity2001 8y agoTruman Show? Thank you, No.
- s2g 8y ago> “It’s not going to be a smart city of surveillance. It’s going to be a smart city of privacy, and that will be a first.” I don't believe this. I think this person should be personally tossed in jail when they inevitably are revealed to be collecting far more than people wanted them to.
- roguecoder 8y agoIt interesting to me that tech's been willing to listen to Christopher Alexander and apply his work on building houses and neighborhoods and cities to building software, but as soon as we turn back to building neighborhoods and cities we ignore him and start trying to reinvent the waterfall method of expertise.
- gehwartzen 8y ago>Mass-produced sensors now cost less than a dollar apiece, even for hobbyists; high-speed broadband and cheap cloud computing mean that a city can collect and analyze reams of data in real time. Does the author believe 'sensors' is a term for some generic commodity product akin to rice? Yes, some sensors cost less then a dollar (but some sensors have cost less than a dollars a piece for decades) but other sensors (I.e. LIDAR, EDS, neutron detector) cost thousands.
- AlexandrB 8y ago> ...and neighbors would crowdsource approvals for block-party permits, giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down based on the noise the gathering was expected to produce. This is hilariously, naively utopian. Systems like this tend to become exclusionary (often based on race), where if you're the "right" kind of people you get permission and if you're not you don't. For examples see existing gated communities and HOAs or the Nextdoor [1] app and its endless reports of "urban youth in hoodies". [1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/racial-profiling-is-still-a-problem-on-nextdoor?utm_term=.jhmwoo6Xb#.slXmXXnwD https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/racial-profiling-i...