30 ms·

Google doesn't need to invest in the gadgets and electronics in the walls that appear to make cities smarter. That money would be better spent on enabling city

Google doesn't need to invest in the gadgets and electronics in the walls that appear to make cities smarter. That money would be better spent on enabling city governments, elected policymakers, and especially their constituents to be smarter and able to make better choices and designs about city planning, building permits, incentives, taxation, traffic, etc better. The rest will follow. What we need is for people to understand how to choose better for themselves. Not a technology patch.

52-6F-62 7y ago
And that's what I thought the original mission of Sidewalk Labs was. They seemed to do more research and less city-building.
asdff 7y ago
What do you do when city council members profit off of the status quo? It's not that they are poorly informed, they are well aware of what they are doing and choose to ignore expert advice on city planning decisions. This is the frustration I have with my local government in LA. Most people who live in my city are renters, but most voters in local elections are homeowners so their voice is heard above all else, and council members are landlords or have multiple investment properties. When plans come up for building more density around transit, they overtly say 'this disrupts my view' but really mean 'this will limit the tax-free exponential growth I've enjoyed on my property values.' It's so frustrating, and I'm not sure how it can possibly be changed.
- hinkley 7y ago
  So you give the tools to watchdog groups, and eventually the council has to adopt them in order to reason about how they're being measured. Then the endless game theory rounds begin...
- ISL 7y ago
  My belief, from personal experience, is that those who say "this disrupts my view" actually mean it. They've moved early into a place that suits them, and the place itself is changing. My neighborhood is slowly being transformed by increased density -- it is less and less the neighborhood into which we moved. It isn't the change in property value, it is the change in quality of life that matters. Different people measure quality differently. It is that difference that gives rise to friction. The effect spans income brackets -- there are people who mourn the loss of community in impoverished neighborhoods as density increases at the same time that there are those who mourn the loss of trees and single-family dwellings in wealthier neighborhoods. Change is hard.
  - asdff 7y ago
    The cognitive dissonance among NIMBYs is astounding. 80 years ago, many neighborhoods in LA were just oil derricks and orange groves, which were sold and cleared (or hidden behind facades in the case of the derricks, which still pump today) for housing to meet surging demand after WWII, which never went away. Decade after decade the demand has only grown, yet the people living in these first batches of housing quickly built to meet demand they themselves created fail to see that their situation is no different. NIMBYs just happened to find work in LA a little bit sooner and fail to see that they were once a changing force to the landscape as well. If you want to preserve your neighborhood, you are free to buy as many parcels as you like and leave them be. If you can't afford the fair market price to dictate what gets built on the land, then you have no ground to stand on imo, but there are also plenty of options for you. There are planned communities you can move to with tight HOA regulations if you insist on limiting what others can and can't do with their belongings. To move to a city like LA, which experiences double digit percent growth decade after decade since its inception, and to expect nothing to change at all the minute after you sign your mortgage, is baffling to me. It isn't grounded in reality. Move to Cleveland if you want stasis, the greater metro population there is virtually unchanged over the past 50 years.
- triceratops 7y ago
  > Most people who live in my city are renters, but most voters in local elections are homeowners Sounds like renters should start voting. Why would city council members do anything for the interests of people that don't vote? Not only is it against their own self-interest, it's anti-democratic. Elected representatives have to do what their voters want - it's the bedrock of democracy. That reps are profiting off the system is a side-effect, not the root cause.
  - asdff 7y ago
    I rent, I vote. Plenty of people do vote. But, a typical homeowner in LA is more well off and therefore has more free time to wait in line to vote, so that is who is most likely to vote. There are people here who need to work 60-80 hour weeks to survive.
    - triceratops 7y ago
      > has more free time to wait in line to vote Lobby for vote-by-mail, early voting, and holidays on election day. I'm sorry, but that's the only way. Hard problems don't have easy solutions. You can't expect any council member to go against their voters' wishes on any issue. Local elections are personal and people who vote in them follow the issues closely. A council member who listens to "expert advice" rather their voters will be voted out or recalled, and the next person would simply vote to put things back the way they were. If you want lasting change, you have to broaden the electorate and educate them on the issues.
      - asdff 7y ago
        Fundamentally, its a cultural issue we have in this country that is somewhat disgusting. Politicians should not be just listening to their voters, or their backers, they should be listening to all their constituents, everyone who lives in the areas they represent, with particular focus to the most vulnerable and not the other way around as what frequently happens. The incentives are completely backward. The interests of those that play the politick game well are prioritized at the cost of the people who need the most assistance from public government. I'm very supportive of expanded voting and recently LA has made election day into an entire week that you can stroll in and cast your vote (Of course, everyone waited until the last minute and polls wrapped around the block at the very last day you could cast your ballot, but that is beside the point). Even with vote by mail or other initiatives to get out the vote, this leaves a lot of people without representation in LA. There is the requirement that you have the time to study the issues and become an informed voter, which is a privilege not enjoyed by everyone. There are also a lot of undocumented people paying rent and working jobs in LA. I think these people who are contributing to the local economy should also be represented by the people in charge of the area in which they live their life. They have just as much right to be here as I or any other citizen does. I think the best way to overcome petty politicking would be to limit the control elected officials have over what should be logical and factually rooted decision making. In LA, council members are more powerful in their district than the mayor or any other elected official, they have absolute control over what gets built be it on parcels of land or even paint on the roads. Just look at the patchyness of the bike lane network to see this effect in action; metro has money earmarked and is ready to build but local council members just refuse to allow it to happen in their district. They operate as little feudal lords who award contracts to friends and deny contracts if some who holds their ear takes issue for whatever reason at all. Urban planning decisions should not be controlled by politicians, they should be controlled by urban planners who are highly trained civil engineers from the best engineering schools hired to do an apolitical job. They understand these issues better than anyone else in government, and their decisionmaking is rooted in the cutting edge theories and ideas present in their field, profit and personal preference be damned. This is how public government should be run, deferring decision making to informed experts rather than the wills and wishes of those who command the most influence over their representative.
CPLX 7y ago
> city planning, building permits, incentives, taxation, traffic If I were a Toronto resident I would not want a foreign, powerful, rapacious and often exploitative private company involved in those things, as they are better handled by democratic institutions.
reaperducer 7y ago
What we need is for people to understand how to choose better for themselves. Not a technology patch. Google only has one hammer: the algorithm. It just comes in different colors. Traffic? Waymo algorithm. Municipal planning? Smart Cities algorithm. Advertising? AdSense algorithm. Journalism? Google News algorithm. Google, and certain other tech companies, need to learn that not every problem can be solved by a computer.
- drusepth 7y ago
  Curious: what problem could be solved by a human (or group of humans) but not a computer (or group of computers)?
  - antipaul 7y ago
    My half-serious reply: Figuring out what the problem is :) “Computers are useless, they can only give you answers”
  - majormajor 7y ago
    Any problem where the solution requires persuading people to adopt it or comply with it. All those projects google shuts down? Those were problems they tried to solve but failed to.
  - rahulnair23 7y ago
    Inequity, education, sustainability, public policy, governance - few examples where techno-solutionism isn't the right approach.
    - mschuster91 7y ago
      Actually it would be, at least for sustainability, inequality and parts of public policy/governance. Simulations of "what-if-when" scenarios or analysis of data (which is what public policy of any kind should be based upon anyway) are precisely what computers excel at. What humans (or rather: our governments) don't excel at: accurately using the data that technology gives us. We know that climate change is real, man-made and will fuck up entire continents, but still there are world leaders actively rejecting science.
mcguire 7y ago
How would that allow Google to collect personal data in order to better sell advertisements?
ramshorns 7y ago
Yes, though it depends on your goal. Alphabet's goal was probably not to actually make the city better to live in, but to find more ways to collect personal information for their own profit. Anyway, Cory Doctorow wrote recently that cities full of sensors need not be used to spy on citizens, and could just be helpful instead. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/17/the-case-for-cities-where-youre-the-sensor-not-the-thing-being-sensed https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/17/the-case-for-...
crazygringo 7y ago
Why not both? First of all, it's not either/or. Second of all, better democratic decisionmaking has nothing to do with Google's expertise. There are plenty of political scientists and think tanks working on better decisionmaking processes. Spending Sidewalk Labs' money on them makes as much sense as asking for Kraft Foods or ExxonMobil to do so. But third, good democratic governance requires data and provides services. If Google can help generate real-time data to improve services (and inform better decisions), how is that not a win?
- thewebcount 7y ago
  One way it's not a win is because all things Google involve them collecting the data in a way that can be monetized. That collection is generally problematic to a lot of people.
throwaway0a5e 7y ago
>That money would be better spent on enabling city governments, elected policymakers, and especially their constituents to be smarter and able to make better choices and designs about city planning, building permits, incentives, taxation, traffic, etc better. You're not wrong but this is kind of a naive way of looking at the problem. Making city employees more efficient means less jobs politicians can write the deadbeat nephew of a local construction mogul a recommendation for, a direct reduction in their power and influence. Even if you discount politicians government itself is often a bunch of competing fiefdoms where anyone who becomes more efficient can expect less resources thrown their way as a result. While there are many bureaucrats who do want to make things better and more efficient the incentives that the politicians and appointed department heads who ultimately call the shots have to work under cannot be discounted.
koheripbal 7y ago
Have you ever tried to convince a politician to do something? It's disappointing. It is easier to get a contract and just do it you way.
ex3ndr 7y ago
We tried to sell to Planning Department of SF. They literally told us: we are not going to buy anything that shows our weaknesses.

52-6F-62 7y ago

And that's what I thought the original mission of Sidewalk Labs was. They seemed to do more research and less city-building.

asdff 7y ago

What do you do when city council members profit off of the status quo? It's not that they are poorly informed, they are well aware of what they are doing and choose to ignore expert advice on city planning decisions. This is the frustration I have with my local government in LA. Most people who live in my city are renters, but most voters in local elections are homeowners so their voice is heard above all else, and council members are landlords or have multiple investment properties. When plans come up for building more density around transit, they overtly say 'this disrupts my view' but really mean 'this will limit the tax-free exponential growth I've enjoyed on my property values.' It's so frustrating, and I'm not sure how it can possibly be changed.

hinkley 7y ago
So you give the tools to watchdog groups, and eventually the council has to adopt them in order to reason about how they're being measured. Then the endless game theory rounds begin...
ISL 7y ago
My belief, from personal experience, is that those who say "this disrupts my view" actually mean it. They've moved early into a place that suits them, and the place itself is changing. My neighborhood is slowly being transformed by increased density -- it is less and less the neighborhood into which we moved. It isn't the change in property value, it is the change in quality of life that matters. Different people measure quality differently. It is that difference that gives rise to friction. The effect spans income brackets -- there are people who mourn the loss of community in impoverished neighborhoods as density increases at the same time that there are those who mourn the loss of trees and single-family dwellings in wealthier neighborhoods. Change is hard.
- asdff 7y ago
  The cognitive dissonance among NIMBYs is astounding. 80 years ago, many neighborhoods in LA were just oil derricks and orange groves, which were sold and cleared (or hidden behind facades in the case of the derricks, which still pump today) for housing to meet surging demand after WWII, which never went away. Decade after decade the demand has only grown, yet the people living in these first batches of housing quickly built to meet demand they themselves created fail to see that their situation is no different. NIMBYs just happened to find work in LA a little bit sooner and fail to see that they were once a changing force to the landscape as well. If you want to preserve your neighborhood, you are free to buy as many parcels as you like and leave them be. If you can't afford the fair market price to dictate what gets built on the land, then you have no ground to stand on imo, but there are also plenty of options for you. There are planned communities you can move to with tight HOA regulations if you insist on limiting what others can and can't do with their belongings. To move to a city like LA, which experiences double digit percent growth decade after decade since its inception, and to expect nothing to change at all the minute after you sign your mortgage, is baffling to me. It isn't grounded in reality. Move to Cleveland if you want stasis, the greater metro population there is virtually unchanged over the past 50 years.
triceratops 7y ago
> Most people who live in my city are renters, but most voters in local elections are homeowners Sounds like renters should start voting. Why would city council members do anything for the interests of people that don't vote? Not only is it against their own self-interest, it's anti-democratic. Elected representatives have to do what their voters want - it's the bedrock of democracy. That reps are profiting off the system is a side-effect, not the root cause.
- asdff 7y ago
  I rent, I vote. Plenty of people do vote. But, a typical homeowner in LA is more well off and therefore has more free time to wait in line to vote, so that is who is most likely to vote. There are people here who need to work 60-80 hour weeks to survive.
  - triceratops 7y ago
    > has more free time to wait in line to vote Lobby for vote-by-mail, early voting, and holidays on election day. I'm sorry, but that's the only way. Hard problems don't have easy solutions. You can't expect any council member to go against their voters' wishes on any issue. Local elections are personal and people who vote in them follow the issues closely. A council member who listens to "expert advice" rather their voters will be voted out or recalled, and the next person would simply vote to put things back the way they were. If you want lasting change, you have to broaden the electorate and educate them on the issues.
    - asdff 7y ago
      Fundamentally, its a cultural issue we have in this country that is somewhat disgusting. Politicians should not be just listening to their voters, or their backers, they should be listening to all their constituents, everyone who lives in the areas they represent, with particular focus to the most vulnerable and not the other way around as what frequently happens. The incentives are completely backward. The interests of those that play the politick game well are prioritized at the cost of the people who need the most assistance from public government. I'm very supportive of expanded voting and recently LA has made election day into an entire week that you can stroll in and cast your vote (Of course, everyone waited until the last minute and polls wrapped around the block at the very last day you could cast your ballot, but that is beside the point). Even with vote by mail or other initiatives to get out the vote, this leaves a lot of people without representation in LA. There is the requirement that you have the time to study the issues and become an informed voter, which is a privilege not enjoyed by everyone. There are also a lot of undocumented people paying rent and working jobs in LA. I think these people who are contributing to the local economy should also be represented by the people in charge of the area in which they live their life. They have just as much right to be here as I or any other citizen does. I think the best way to overcome petty politicking would be to limit the control elected officials have over what should be logical and factually rooted decision making. In LA, council members are more powerful in their district than the mayor or any other elected official, they have absolute control over what gets built be it on parcels of land or even paint on the roads. Just look at the patchyness of the bike lane network to see this effect in action; metro has money earmarked and is ready to build but local council members just refuse to allow it to happen in their district. They operate as little feudal lords who award contracts to friends and deny contracts if some who holds their ear takes issue for whatever reason at all. Urban planning decisions should not be controlled by politicians, they should be controlled by urban planners who are highly trained civil engineers from the best engineering schools hired to do an apolitical job. They understand these issues better than anyone else in government, and their decisionmaking is rooted in the cutting edge theories and ideas present in their field, profit and personal preference be damned. This is how public government should be run, deferring decision making to informed experts rather than the wills and wishes of those who command the most influence over their representative.

CPLX 7y ago

> city planning, building permits, incentives, taxation, traffic If I were a Toronto resident I would not want a foreign, powerful, rapacious and often exploitative private company involved in those things, as they are better handled by democratic institutions.

reaperducer 7y ago

What we need is for people to understand how to choose better for themselves. Not a technology patch. Google only has one hammer: the algorithm. It just comes in different colors. Traffic? Waymo algorithm. Municipal planning? Smart Cities algorithm. Advertising? AdSense algorithm. Journalism? Google News algorithm. Google, and certain other tech companies, need to learn that not every problem can be solved by a computer.

drusepth 7y ago
Curious: what problem could be solved by a human (or group of humans) but not a computer (or group of computers)?
- antipaul 7y ago
  My half-serious reply: Figuring out what the problem is :) “Computers are useless, they can only give you answers”
- majormajor 7y ago
  Any problem where the solution requires persuading people to adopt it or comply with it. All those projects google shuts down? Those were problems they tried to solve but failed to.
- rahulnair23 7y ago
  Inequity, education, sustainability, public policy, governance - few examples where techno-solutionism isn't the right approach.
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    Actually it would be, at least for sustainability, inequality and parts of public policy/governance. Simulations of "what-if-when" scenarios or analysis of data (which is what public policy of any kind should be based upon anyway) are precisely what computers excel at. What humans (or rather: our governments) don't excel at: accurately using the data that technology gives us. We know that climate change is real, man-made and will fuck up entire continents, but still there are world leaders actively rejecting science.

mcguire 7y ago

How would that allow Google to collect personal data in order to better sell advertisements?

ramshorns 7y ago

Yes, though it depends on your goal. Alphabet's goal was probably not to actually make the city better to live in, but to find more ways to collect personal information for their own profit. Anyway, Cory Doctorow wrote recently that cities full of sensors need not be used to spy on citizens, and could just be helpful instead. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/17/the-case-for-cities-where-youre-the-sensor-not-the-thing-being-sensed https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/17/the-case-for-...

crazygringo 7y ago

Why not both? First of all, it's not either/or. Second of all, better democratic decisionmaking has nothing to do with Google's expertise. There are plenty of political scientists and think tanks working on better decisionmaking processes. Spending Sidewalk Labs' money on them makes as much sense as asking for Kraft Foods or ExxonMobil to do so. But third, good democratic governance requires data and provides services. If Google can help generate real-time data to improve services (and inform better decisions), how is that not a win?

thewebcount 7y ago
One way it's not a win is because all things Google involve them collecting the data in a way that can be monetized. That collection is generally problematic to a lot of people.

throwaway0a5e 7y ago

>That money would be better spent on enabling city governments, elected policymakers, and especially their constituents to be smarter and able to make better choices and designs about city planning, building permits, incentives, taxation, traffic, etc better. You're not wrong but this is kind of a naive way of looking at the problem. Making city employees more efficient means less jobs politicians can write the deadbeat nephew of a local construction mogul a recommendation for, a direct reduction in their power and influence. Even if you discount politicians government itself is often a bunch of competing fiefdoms where anyone who becomes more efficient can expect less resources thrown their way as a result. While there are many bureaucrats who do want to make things better and more efficient the incentives that the politicians and appointed department heads who ultimately call the shots have to work under cannot be discounted.

koheripbal 7y ago

Have you ever tried to convince a politician to do something? It's disappointing. It is easier to get a contract and just do it you way.

ex3ndr 7y ago

We tried to sell to Planning Department of SF. They literally told us: we are not going to buy anything that shows our weaknesses.