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Daniel Doctoroff (chairman and CEO of Sidewalk Labs and former deputy mayor of New York City) and Eric Schmidt (executive chairman of Alphabet and former CEO of Google) recently contributed a piece to the Globe and Mail about “why Toronto is the ideal place to build a neighborhood of the future.”
It’s about the partnership they working on with Waterfront Toronto. I wrote about that announcement, here.
Here is an excerpt from the Globe article:
“The eastern waterfront will be a place where residents, companies, startups and local organizations can advance new ideas for improving city life. It’s where a self-driving test shuttle will take its first steps toward becoming a next-generation transit system that’s cheaper, safer and more convenient than private car-ownership. It’s where new insights into advanced construction methods will start to reveal a path toward more affordable housing development. It’s where explorations into renewable energy and sustainable building designs will show promise toward becoming a climate-positive blueprint for cities around the world.”
These are some of the first details that I have heard about their vision for Toronto’s eastern waterfront.
Some of you are probably worried – after reading the above excerpt – that by focusing on self-driving vehicles, we are setting ourselves up to repeat our previous mistakes. But if self-driving vehicles are destined to become a reality (and it certainly feels that way), it is critical that we understand their impact and how they might best dovetail with the public transit systems we already have in place.
I am thrilled that all of this will be happening right here on our doorstep.
One of Alphabet’s subsidiaries is a company by the name of Sidewalk Labs. Some of you, I’m sure, have been following it. The goal of the company is to leverage technology in order to solve some of our biggest urban challenges.
Initially, they were fairly under the radar, but more recently they’ve become a lot more public with their projects and their mission. Here is a snippet from a recent blog post written by their CEO, Daniel L. Doctoroff:
“The world is poised for a fourth urban-tech revolution — an age of connectivity capable of reshaping cities as much as the steam engine, electricity, and automobile have in the past. New technologies will help citizens and elected officials tackle those intractable urban challenges that Larry outlined last summer, but making sure this age imposes fewer social costs than those previous shifts is critical.”
Earlier this week it was also announced that the company is likely to enter the real estate development business and construct a new city precinct in order to pilot some of their ideas and projects. The initiative is called Project Sidewalk.
Here is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:
“According to people familiar with Sidewalk’s plans, the division of Alphabet is putting the final touches on a proposal to get into the business of developing giant new districts of housing, offices and retail within existing cities.
The company would seek cities with large swaths of land they want redeveloped—likely economically struggling municipalities grappling with decay—perhaps through a bidding process, the people said. Sidewalk would partner with one or more of those cities to build up the districts, which are envisioned to hold tens of thousands of residents and employees, and to be heavily integrated with technology.”
When I read this, I immediately thought of the Port Lands area in Toronto. Not because Toronto is decaying – far from it – but because it’s a massive 880 acre site that is both adjacent to downtown and entirely underutilized. I can’t wait to see this area transformed into a thriving waterfront community.
In any event, if or when Project Sidewalk gets off the ground, it will be very interesting to see what a Google-backed real estate development company looks like.
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