Name: Upgrade, Interrupted: Inside Sidewalk Labs’ city of the future
Uploaded: 2020-02-14
Duration: 11 min 28 s
Description: And the challenges it faces moving forward.

Cities are growing very quickly. And cities are experiencing major challenges, challenges around our climate, how to build our cities more sustainably. challenges around mobility, how to reduce congestion make it easier for people to get around. Challenges around affordability. At Sidewalk Labs, when we think about smart cities, we think about how do we use new design, new policy and new technologies to actually address some of these major challenges? How can we build Build our buildings in a way that is different. That allows us to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make them more affordable for people. How do we actually change the way we design and think about streets so that it can really improve people's mobility? [ MUSIC ] Keysight is our flagship project. It's a 3. 2 million square foot project on the waterfront in Toronto on the shores of Lake Ontario. Where we will demonstrate how many of the hypothesis we have about the future of urbanism, and how innovation can make the quality of life better will be deployed for the first time. Sidewalk Labs will create a test bed for new technologies in Key Side. Technologies that will help us build smarter, greener, more inclusive cities, which we hope to see scale across Toronto's Eastern waterfront and eventually, in other parts of Canada and around the world. [ MUSIC ] Some of the really exciting innovations that are proposed in this project are entirely new ways of constructing buildings in the city. Steel and concrete are some of the most significant creators of greenhouse gas emissions. It's now possible to build tall buildings, we're talking up to 35 storeys, entirely out of wood. Those buildings can be safe, they can be resistant to fire and it's a far far more sustainable process. So it's used in a renewable resource. Capture [ UNKNOWN ] and they can actually be beautiful by having that would expose to people inside the buildings. This project would be the first neighborhood built entirely out of tall timber construction. We've reconceived that the way we think about space in buildings. We've invested for example, in a company with IKEA that uses robotic furniture to make A 700 square foot apartment feel like 850 square feet. So you're looking at as a model of key side. So this is along the eastern part of the waterfront that is expanding rapidly today. And so you have right here queens key which is the kind of waterfront neighborhood mainstream here in Toronto. You see a lot of different innovations around Expanding the bi cleans, improving the paving systems, you'd have new light rail transit. One of the things we are really interested in is how do you incorporate climate date into your building design process from the beginning. So studying the wind patterns, studying actually the micro climates on block to block basis, and start to think about the fasads and shapes of the buildings, to make it, so that the buildings actually help to make the outdoor spaces. As usable across the seasons as possible, and of course to be beautiful architecture. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] We're still evaluating a bunch of technologies, like will freight be delivered through tunnels? How do we manage stormwater? And how do we ensure that recycling actually can be done in multifamily buildings where it's Typically not done effectively. All of those we use data, typically anonymized data in order to kind of make the process of living in a place and operating a place much more efficient. For this project, we've only proposed to collect any data when it's Absolutely necessary to achieving some really critical public outcome. So for example around reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there's the idea there's a collection of data around energy use in the neighborhood to make sure we can really have the most efficient energy use. Is possible. There's no collection of information about people's movements kind of tracking people. It's really about the kind of key elements of urban infrastructure. That you know in the past we've had a little bit of data about now we can know much more and we can make them much more efficient to help address things like climate change. [ MUSIC ] I'd feel it's privacy. Nobody really [ INAUDIBLE ] privacy in anyway. I think privacy doesn't really matter if it comes into the world being in a better place. Yeah. There's some concerns about that, but I feel that with it going through the city and they've got a lot of people with knowledge. A balanced view, I'm I'm not too concerned. I have concerns about the privacy issues, but perhaps less so when it only relates to 12 acres as an experiment. with certain issues, I think it would be okay. The best answer for how to give people comfort is actually to have the data manage By government, and that's where we have ended up with the governments in Toronto and in Canada. We believe government should actually take responsibility for the management of the process of Data governance and are willing to abide by anything that the government actually says it wants to do. A lot of the conversation around sidewalk labs ans sidewalk toronto has been about data and privacy. And that's when Sort of one element of this project, but infrastructure is really an area that is under discussed. Block Sidewalk is trying to build civic capacity to participate in policy and to participate in what do we do with this project that's going on, how do you get people to engage in it? The fundamental issue here is that if governments are selling the opportunity for a corporation to shape how we live, that's a problem. Full stop. We don't have laws, policies, rules, informed by the public to set sort of the stage of the terms for smart cities. And so it's our opinion that it shouldn't happen, we set those rules, and then you can procure. And then you can invite vendors, and then you can invite- there's lots of different stakeholders that will take part in the project like that this .>> I think overwhelmingly that people [ INAUDIBLE ] in favor of this based what they know thus far, But yeah, no matter what you do, they're always going to be critics. The key to moving forward and being successful is to listen, getting the parties to listen to each other. We have been quite diligent in doing that in Toronto. I think we've presented to 21, 000 People over the course of about a year and a half period. We haven't always listened as well as we should. But the fact that we are moving forward with the enthusiastic support of the three levels of government plus the waterfront, Toronto staff and board is a testament to the fact that we can adapt too. And find the right way to move forward. There was never a chance for the residents of Toronto to say no to this. There was no moment of consent. You've got the government's and sidewalk labs, co authoring a plan. If you and I were to co author a plan, are we going to turn around and rejected? Probably not. So this is being designed to be approved. So there never was an off ramp. And I think that it's fundamentally problematic in a democratic society. Part of one of their proposals, probably the larger proposal was to kind of pay up front for some transit and I'm not sure that that's the way to go. Because the city will be on the hook for it anyway, I'm a proponent of public transit paid for by the public through taxation etc, rather than by a private company. I really don't believe that they should have that much control. And I mean, let's face it, you know, this is its industrial land that's now vacant And 50 years from now, or 80 years from now, or 100 years from now Google may not exist anymore. When you devote so much land to one developer, to one owner, you're kinda looking for trouble. It's fundamentally important to understand that if have vendors designing [ UNKNOWN ] they do it so that they can be continually engaged in the operations of that infrastructure. If you look at the last 20 years of the technologies that governments have purchased, they have been paying maintenance fees on those things and the large bulk of hundreds of millions of dollars is going to maintaining systems. Not even anything new. Do we need this? What's the marginal value of making this more complicated if you have these technologies, who's paying for them? Is the city paying for them? Are residents paying for them? What's the, you know, what's the longer term impact? Alphabet believes that with it Capital, particularly patient capital. It's a ray of technologies that exist within the Alphabet sort of umbrella that it can make a contribution to solving some of the big problems that the world faces. One of the big problems the world faces is how to make our cities more inclusive and sustainable. They believe, we believe that technology carefully applied focused on solving the problems can help to solve that problem. If you start to privatize governance, if you start to let companies dictate the future of cities because they're productizing things and showing up and saying do this, this is great, this is the future. You lose public control. And this is exactly when we need to have more public control. And local government is where this stuff is landing. It's not national, it's not regional. It's at the city level. So it is fundamental that as this power plays get made on local government. The public really needs to stand up and say how do we maintain control and build power? Because we need to define the future of cities for every person living in the city and that's only going to come out of that sort of spirit of social contract and public infrastructure. So right now we're actually on the key side side and when you can see behind me here is the towers of downtown Toronto, the financial district So in the next couple of years we should be able to begin breaking ground on the first buildings which would likely be sort of on the western side of the site, close to the buildings you see there in the distance. Progressively moving over the course of about five years through the rest of the neighborhood to the buildings directly on the lake itself. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ]

Upgrade, Interrupted: Inside Sidewalk Labs’ city of the future

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How a smart city is built, and the challenges it faces.

Alphabet-owned Sidewalk Labs’ city of the future 

And the challenges it faces moving forward.