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Last week Sidewalk Toronto held a roundtable discussion here in the city and released some preliminary design ideas and strategies for Quayside. (That’s why Dan Doctoroff was talking on BNN Bloomberg.)
I went through the full presentation this morning and below are a bunch of slides that I thought you all might find interesting.
Here is the extent of “Quayside” along the waterfront. The current land use permissions allow for about 3 million square feet of space and towers as tall as 50 storeys.
Here is a paving system being explored for the area. It is modular. It may melt snow. And perhaps most interestingly, it would allow for dynamic changes in road use throughout the day. This sort of thing already happens to a lesser degree on streets like Jarvis. This technology could take that much further.
One of their primary goals is to double Toronto’s usable outdoor hours. To do that, they are proposing simple weather shields (pictured below) and weather-responsive systems.
They are spending a lot of time thinking about the ground floor of buildings, which they are calling Stoa. The idea is to create flexible and porous spaces that respond quickly to changing needs and that integrate more seamlessly with the surrounding public realm.
There’s a lot on the potential hierarchy of the street network and how each will function for transit, conventional cars, AVs, cyclists, pedestrians, and so on. I was happy to see “laneways” as a core part of the pedestrian network. They are designed for walking speeds. Access would be restricted for things that move too quickly.
This image ties in the street grid and Stoa.
Finally, the goal is to build the neighborhood entirely out of timber, and more specifically, Canadian timber. If they follow through on this, I think it would really push adoption of this material forward in the city.
I would encourage you to check out the full package, which you can do here. I can’t wait for these projects to get underway along Toronto’s waterfront.
Dan Doctoroff, the CEO of Sidewalk Labs (and the former deputy mayor of New York City), was recently interviewed by BNN Bloomberg about the company’s plans and ambitions for Quayside here in Toronto.
He talks about the project; their interest in timber construction; how the company, Sidewalk Labs, might ultimately make money; and how their mission is to create a global hub for urban innovation.
This last point is, of course, the most exciting opportunity – both for Sidewalk Labs/Alphabet and for Toronto. And it’s why many people believe that Quayside will end up a far greater (economic development) coup compared to HQ2.
The interview is only 10 minutes. If you can’t see it embedded below, click here.
Politico Magazine recently published this article about Sidewalk Toronto. It’s called: Google Is Building a City of the Future in Toronto. Would Anyone Want to Live There?
If you’re familiar with what Sidewalk Toronto is up to, the first bit will likely cover things you already know. But later on it gets into an interesting discussion around data privacy, among other things.
One argument is that if you strip any personal identifiers from the data you collect, then you’ve effectively eliminated the issue of privacy.
But what about “collective privacy?”
What if you could, for example, identity signs of concentrated drug usage within certain districts, communities, or even buildings? Does that start to get a little too personal?
This is the great debate surrounding Quayside, the area that Sidewalk is focused on. The article also touches on what Quayside could mean for the future of Toronto.
Just about all players involved believe that if Sidewalk can be successful at Quayside, it has a shot at the adjoining 800-acre Port Lands, a swath of problem space big enough to become home to a dozen new neighborhoods in a growing metropolis. Townsend, the consultant, says of the Port Lands: “That’s a city they’re going to build there. This is just the warmup, this little piece.”
Full article, here. There’s also an audio version in case that’s your preferred consumption method. It’s about 40 minutes long if you do it that way (and don’t speed it up).
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