Google's Sidewalk Labs Thinks a Reinvented Awning Will Fix Toronto's Winter (engadget.com)

One of the prototypes Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs is working on for its planned neighborhood on Toronto's waterfront is a hexagonal paving system. "The slabs are porous and heated, which may keep snow and ice at bay without salting," reports Engadget. "They're easy to replace, and include LED lights that can, for instance, help direct traffic flow during construction or mark street closures." From the report: Sidewalk will also demonstrate what it's calling a Building Raincoat, an awning it says will help protect sidewalks from wind, rain, sun and snow to make outdoor space usable throughout the year. It attaches to the sides of buildings and is fixed to ground anchors. It's made from a durable, lightweight and transparent plastic called ETFE (Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene).

In addition, Sidewalk will have a number of art installations at the public event, which "use lighting, projection mapping, mud and other techniques to reflect on relationships between humans and animals in public space, and the broader connection of ecology and urbanism." Some of the works will be projected onto the awning. Along with the prototypes, Sidewalk will discuss some of its broader ideas about how to make its neighborhood livable and accessible, in part through affordable housing and its transit system.

Comments

Re:Yeah, let's heat all the sidewalks!

[Gavagai80]

The genius of it is you only have to heat the sidewalks for the first few years. After that, the emissions from doing so make Toronto too warm for ice.

Winter and tiles don't get along

[sandbagger]

Cities that face winter use poured slabs for sidewalks because there are no cracks for the water to get into, freeze and then expand and break material. This will never make it past a demo section of pavement in a place near city hall so local officials can get their photos taken.

Why, oh, why, would you embed electronics that need to be maintained and repaired into sidewalks particularly once ... I'll stop here. Physics will just take care of this idiocy unfortunately some taxpayer money will get wasted in the process, hopefully not much.

Re:Winter and tiles don't get along

[tlhIngan]

Cities that face winter use poured slabs for sidewalks because there are no cracks for the water to get into, freeze and then expand and break material. This will never make it past a demo section of pavement in a place near city hall so local officials can get their photos taken.

Actually, poured slabs have the cracking problem. First, concrete cracks. No way around it - concrete will crack, it's to be expected.

Second, the goal is not not resist water, but to shed it. Either by being extremely porous so water just drains through the material (a lot of new asphalt roads are like this - it can be a rainstorm and the road looks like it's dry), or deigned to channel the water to a drain. Water that sits on the surface and freezes will create cracks on the surface.

Nothing wrong with paver style sidewalks - they are exceptionally good at letting water drain down through them. The only problem is their bedding isn't designed to handle the influx of water and washes away, leading to roads that are bumpy. But those problems are also solved because modern asphalt roads do the same thing, and they're beds are deigned to handle the water and drain it away. The roads stay drier so they're safer in rain and draining the water away also keeps ice from forming on the surface.

Fire

[manu0601]

When burned, ETFE releases highly toxic hydrofluoric acid. One streets are paved with that, you should hope they will not host a fire.

Re:Fire

[Required Snark]

Fluorene plus and minus.

Plus: Reduce tooth decay.

Minus: Melts your face off.

Re:Fire

[hey!]

EFTE has been used on a number of notable buildings without problem, but up until the Grenfell Towers disaster in 2017 you could have said the same about Polyisocyanurate (PIR). You can do an impressive fire resistance demonstration with a block of PIR and a plumber's torch, but it's still possible to design an installation where it presents a hazard because it *can* be made to burn, releasing cyanide.

I suspect there isn't much concern about exposing EFTE to something like a candle flame; it just won't catch. But if you're putting a substance which *can* burn, even if very reluctantly, into what can in effect be a plenum space, you need to a little more engineering than a simple small-scale burn test.

Thunderf00t

[hjf]

Man... it's SOLAR FREAKIN ROADWAYS all over again.

Re:Thunderf00t

[Wing_Zero]

Well, to their credit, they aren't (at least according to TFS) solar, just heated. and being porous, they can be connected to the storm drain, maybe with a flow sensor under them, so they only stay on long enough to clear the road/sidewalk/business entrance. I really see this as no different than heat tape in the gutter, or roof heaters. you only run them for a half hour, snow/ice melt fairly easily, and then your good until the next 4 letter event. here in northern Wisconsin we already use those things I mention as well as corn boilers to melt driveways.

Re:You can't fix Toronto.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like someone from Calgary.

Reinvented?

[Speare]

Towns and cities have had awnings over merchant areas for centuries. It may not be this exact material, but there have been weather canopies over the bazaar and shotengai and market in pretty much every country, to either shade folks or keep them warm and dry. Many shopping malls in the USA from Michigan to Arizona used to be more open and followed the merchant street model around 40 years ago, but slowly became roofed in and fused into a single structural arcology model with shoppers dependent on air conditioning.

save on salt?

[Mishotaki]

sure, you might save on salt, but you're heating the frikking sidewalk to evaporate water or displace it all... how expensive do they expect that to be?

Re:A few hundred years of working

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Also, nothing new about awnings in streets. Seville & Malaga, in southern Spain, have awnings/sails anchored between buildings to keep the midday sun off people's heads. They've been there for decades.

Because the only thing worse than icy sidewalks is

[holophrastic]

Ah, melting the ice on the sidewalks. Magic. Poof! It's gone.

Where'd it go?

Remind me, beside what are the sidewalks walked? Oh yeah.

The road.

Because flowing water, yeah, that's what we want at -39 degrees around here.

Sure you can heat the entire city. Sure you can make it all indoors. But if you expect to beat winter, and come out ahead financially, then you've never understood winter.

I'm surprised no one has gone the other way on this. Disposable sidewalks. Full of cracks to absorb the ice and maintain traction. But they only last one season, or less. And they are very easy and very inexpensive and very quick to replace or repair.

Maybe a poured "concrete", fibrous like wood-pulp. Let it crack. Pour some more every month.

Re:If they are

[DontBeAMoran]

The ones I've seen are nice and slippery when wet.

You better hope they're not, otherwise the city of Toronto will be sued by Bon Jovi.

Re:A few hundred years of working

[ceoyoyo]

Paving stones are used in most Canadian cities too (. To me, they appear to last longer than concrete slabs: the spaces between stones give them some room to shift around as the water freezes between them. Concrete just cracks, and then the water makes the cracks worse each winter.