Google has a vision for what “smart” city life will be like in the future. People will get around in taxibots and driverless buses, not private cars. Freight robots will handle the messy chore of disposing garbage and recyclables in underground tunnels. Residents will live in affordable, pod-like modular buildings and enjoy stress-free commerce on pedestrian-friendly streets. Underpinning this idealized vision of the future is data-driven technology, making life affordable and environmentally sustainable. The blueprint for this urban nirvana will be tested in Toronto, Canada, where Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, will work with the city to redevelop a 12-acre (4.9-hectare) waterfront area with 3.3 million square feet (306,580 sq m) of residential, office, and commercial space.
There goes the neighborhood:
- Sidewalk Labs will invest $50 million USD and embark on a year-long planning process for Quayside, a first-of-its-kind technological endeavor.
- The new community will be driven by information technology -- monitoring traffic, noise, air quality, and the performance of basic systems, such as the electrical grid -- to guide its daily operations.
- Quayside’s energy system is expected to reduce consumption by 95 percent. Digital monitoring would analyze the movements of people, traffic and goods, actively responding to what works and what doesn’t.