Google's Toronto City Built 'From the Internet Up' (bbc.com)

On Toronto's Eastern waterfront, a new digital city is being built by Sidewalk Labs -- a firm owned by Google's parent Alphabet. It hopes the project will become a model for 21st-Century urbanism. From a report: But the deal has been controversial, representing one of biggest ever tie-ups between a city and a large corporation. And that, coupled with the fact that the corporation in question is one of the largest tech firms in the world, is causing some unease. Sidewalk Labs promises to transform the disused waterfront area into a bustling mini metropolis, one built "from the internet up," although there is no timetable for when the city will actually be built. Dan Doctoroff, the company's head and former deputy mayor of New York, told the BBC the project was "about creating healthier, safer, more convenient and more fun lives. We want this to be a model for what urban life can be in the 21st Century," he said. The area will have plenty of sensors collecting data -- from traffic, noise and air quality -- and monitoring the performance of the electric grid and waste collection.

Comments

Re:You say Google, eh?

[Mashiki]

The real goal is to rebuild the waterfront, where this is taking place because no developer wanted to deal with the absolute bureaucratic nightmare known as Toronto to do it. Then didn't want anything to do with the bureaucratic nightmare from the province of Ontario and the insane environmental regulations and impact studies. This has been going on since the mid-90's, and the previous Toronto governments drove away investment, and the current Liberal Party policies ensured that nobody wanted to do anything with it. It actually got worse under the leadership of the Liberal Party(under Dalton McGuinty), several groups were looking at pooling together and rebuilding it back in 2000. The 2003 election changed that, especially with the anti-industry and anti-development platforms pushed by the party.

Now see the finances of Ontario and Toronto. Toronto has a massive budget shortfall and is hoping that this will stop the lending market from downgrading the city by showing "future revenue" from it. Toronto itself isn't much different in terms of mismanagement then Detroit or Chicago. And the Liberal Party of Ontario is hoping the same, because they've caused the province to be downgraded repeatedly due to the massive debt load. As a comparison, when Greece's debt imploded it was at $300B. Ontario is at $315B with roughly the same population(11m) or 1/3 of the population of Canada. And the debt level under the current government went fro 113B to 315B in 20 years, but in general the province has nothing to show for it outside of Toronto itself.