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.