{"id":12251,"date":"2018-08-30T16:08:41","date_gmt":"2018-08-30T14:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mobilitytechgreen.com\/en\/?p=12251"},"modified":"2021-01-22T16:20:15","modified_gmt":"2021-01-22T15:20:15","slug":"sidewalk-toronto-alphabet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mobilitytechgreen.com\/en\/blog\/2018\/08\/30\/sidewalk-toronto-alphabet\/","title":{"rendered":"Sidewalk Toronto: the smart city seen by Alphabet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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To transform a neighborhood of Toronto into a testing ground for the city of tomorrow: this is the ambitious project of Sidewalk Labs,\u00a0 a subsidiary of Alphabet (Google) specialized in innovating urban planning. The company unveiled mid-august new conceptual illustrations for this \u201csmart city\u201d not quite like the others. <\/strong><\/p>\n

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It’s done: the last 31st of July the Waterfront Toronto’s board\u00a0unanimously agreed\u00a0to work with\u00a0Sidewalk Labs<\/a>\u00a0to reinvent a part of the city and gives us a glimpse of large cities’ future. The joint project Sidewalk Toronto<\/a> is officially launched.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Located in Quayside<\/strong>, this district of a new kind will not use technology just to prove its innovative nature. The key pillar of this project \u2013 which total cost is estimated at 1 billion dollars by the Wall Street Journal – is to use both digital applications and urban design<\/strong> to provide some answers to numerous challenges we are already facing today. Among them: longer commutes, higher rents and overpopulation leading to fewer employment opportunities. Former industrial site, Quayside is an ideal candidate for urban rehabilitation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Once a New York City deputy mayor, Daniel D. Doctoroff is now the co-founder of Sidewalk Labs. According to him, we\u2019re experiencing the fourth revolution of urban technology<\/strong>. Each of them shook the way we build cities in their own way. The steam engine<\/strong> brought trains and industrialization in urban areas. Electricity<\/strong> transformed cities in 24h\/24 living places and buildings became more and more vertical. Finally, the age of automobile<\/strong> forced us to rethink our roads, our infrastructures and more globally the public space in order to separate the different means of transportation.<\/p>\n

This supremacy of the individual automobile in urban environment is shifting. With the multiplication of mobility offers and the digitalization, the transportation market is once again evolving. And so must our cities. We have the necessity, and we could also say the opportunity, to deeply rethink urban planning and, by extension, the way we live in them.<\/p>\n

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An innovative and involved community<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\u00a9Sidewalk Labs<\/p><\/div>\n

The main discussed themes of the Sidewalk Toronto project are the following:<\/p>\n