Toronto gets Ready to Welcome a Futuristic Tech-Driven Mecca Neighborhood into its Ranks
Headlines have been abuzz all over Toronto media. The City of Toronto has won the privilege to have Alphabet build a futuristic neighborhood along the City’s waterfront.
Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, a company department overseeing urban tech innovation, announced a multi-billion dollar commitment to re-developing a significant portion of land along Toronto’s waterfront. This is welcome news for Toronto which seeks to capitalize on Google’s parent company’s investment to ultimately build a neighborhood that could set the trend for future neighborhoods across Canada. Alphabet is seeking to re-imagine approximately 800 acres of the primarily vacant, post-industrial waterfront along Toronto’s east side. The corporation seeks to build a tech-integrated neighborhood it calls ‘Quayside’.
The 196-page document published on Alphabet’s website highlights some of the company’s ideas for the area. These include high-speed ferries, parks that are designed to adapt to the changing Canadian seasons, and robotic waste removal capabilities. Though it is one thing to imagine and another thing to build, the desire to merge smart urban planning with waste management technology is an approach that has won favor with many residents.
When all is said and done, the neighborhood would not be owned by Sidewalk Labs. The company would merely have the massive square area to use for its innovations and urban experiments. Subsequently, Toronto would also receive the most help it could ever hope to receive in transformation a neglected area of the waterfront that could be so much more than what it is today. The chance to create livable spaces and to revitalize the land is something that has been a key focus for the City in recent years, not only along the eastern waterfront but elsewhere in the GTA as well.
If successful, a project like this is hoped to improve city living, to provide more affordable housing for residents, and to potentially bring better public transit to this region. Though some conceptual drawings have been published, it is still up to discussion on how these plans will be implemented. Sidewalk Labs has yet to receive permission from the City to commence building.
Though it has some worried, Sidewalk Labs seeks to fill the neighborhood with a mix of sensors and cameras to collect information regarding pedestrian flow, transportation, pollution, and infrastructure. The company has made claims that it only plans to use its collected information for metrics-purposes. That said, privacy concerns continue to be raised.
The City’s own representatives on the matter have suggested other possible tech-based initiatives, including self-driving taxi bots and self-driving buses.
Eight hundred acres of land is a lot of undeveloped land. Input is continually being sought on the best way to approach this space. A town hall event is currently scheduled for November 1ST. Future consultations are expected though not planned, as of this writing. Despite concerns being abound and the general vagueness surrounding details thus far, the commitment from one of the world’s most powerful companies to participate in this re-development is a very good sign for the future of Toronto.
