Google announces it will build Toronto’s neighbourhood of the future!
This is absolutely huge – for the city, for the country, and for the California-based tech giant in its quest to develop high-tech “smart cities” around the world.
This will mark the biggest project tackled by Sidewalk Labs to date, according to Reuters, and the citizens of Toronto are here for it.
Sidewalk Labs describes itself as a company that “imagines, designs, tests, and builds urban innovations to help cities meet their biggest challenges.”
I think that this is a chance for Resilince2to1 Group to get involved, what do you think?
You know, I’ve kept an eye on this as it involves so much surveillance. I’ve been struck by how the conversation around this project rarely or never mentions Resilience as a design feature at all. Yet it will be a waterfront community. The focus is on surveillance of all forms and data collection. This is ironic as such mechanisms depend ultimately upon electricity. The first thing to go in extreme weather is the electrical grid. So how does this neighbourhood function when there is an extreme storm and people need real information but the grid is down?
I keep expecting the CRO of Toronto to say something but I’ve seen nothing from that end. It is difficult to figure it out really.
Does R2:1 need to have some involvement. Sure. The question is how? Do you see any openings for us? This conversation is important. To design such a neighbourhood these days and focus more on the how’s of data collection over climate resilience is actually irresponsible.
Here is a new article on this initiative. It raises some interesting issues on privacy and how cities relate to rich developers like Google.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/29/google-city-technology-toronto-canada-218841