Let's admit up front that this will not be a real neighborhood, but a test bed for lots of ideas. It will be an expensive place to live, especially when Google moves its Canadian HQs into the area, and there will be inequities between this part of Toronto and the rest if for no other reason than the area and its infrastructure will be built from the ground up to include the required technology. Retro fitting the rest of Toronto would be prohibitively expensive, although some ideas may find their way outside this tech bubble. Again, a test bed -- more power to them.
4
Does Google's corporate anthem sound good in French?
3
Toronto has far more Mandarin , Italian and Hindi speakers than French ones.
6
Great, now the tail can really wag the dog!!! Whatever is Toronto thinking? You can hire a master developer who commits to building a "green neighborhood" using LEED or BREEM standards for neighborhoods. Tech is a means to an end, not an end in itself, and not a religion. I've encountered robot delivery in Washington, DC (which I remind you has a very high walkability score and lots of development). It would be a mistake to cater to the needs of these things, and there needs a process that does not cede design to Google.
3
This isn't necessarily an unprecedented development for Toronto--well, suburban Toronto, at least (cf. Hampton, Keith, & Barry Wellman. (2003). "Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb." _City & Community_, 2(4): 277-311. DOI: 10.1046/j.1535-6841.2003.00057.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1535-6841.2003.00057.x ). For the time, Hampton and Wellman's project was pretty revolutionary: bringing high-speed internet access to an entire municipality in the (relatively) early days of the web. I wouldn't be surprised if residents of an intentionally-developed city were to encounter similar situations as the residents who suddenly had excellent bandwidth available to them in their existing locality.
The idea that technologists can design a large and important area of a major city from the internet up is about the most ridiculous thing I've ever read. Design is done by designers. Planners and designers--architects and landscape architects-- all have important roles, supported by municipal staff and politicians DESIGN based on functional and spatial analysis, within an ecological framework.
The illustration within the article looks like a 'point out 10 unrealistic things exercise'--canoes, person fishing, trees growing out of pavement, accessible low elevation edge at the water (storms? rising water levels? hello?) and many more.
Go ahead Toronto--try to be trendy...and good luck. You'll need it.
5
Take risks and move into the future or play it safe and live in the past. We need to re-think the idea of what a modern city means and I applaud this effort and hopes it works out for them (the waterfront has been a disaster and a competition was setup before Google was selected as the winner). As a fellow Canadian you're both pessimistic while not understanding the entire scope of the project and listing it simply as "trendy". If I were to guess you're over 60 y/o or living in the past.
1
As a Torontonian I know these lands - a piece of semi-abandoned harbor land, whole neighborhoods of decrepit industrial buildings, a recycling plant that had a major fire and such, all linked to the rest of the city by a single bridge to an ugly highway. If these acres can be developed in an intelligent manner congratulations are in order. Toronto is already going through expensive reconstructions of failed planning projects of the past, such as Regent Park. More closed camera surveillance might bring a loss of some privacy, but might have prevented violence, drug dealing, petty crime and major crime. Intelligent energy use might utilize the waters of Lake Ontario for AC and use alternative energy forms for heating. Already sixty per cent of downtowners use bikes rather than cars. In Holland I have worked with famous architects who were disastrous urban planners. I just hope that these Toronto technological planners have the wherewithal to avoid the mistakes of the past.
7
As long as Google does not enable the AI that ends up being the singularity that makes humankind irrelevant. Literally. Google, you are playing with fire here. And yes, you know to what I refer....
1
What are you specifically referring to?
1
If the city of Toronto wants Google to act as the developer on a big chunk of waterfront real estate, so be it. If I were choosing a developer, I'd rather choose someone with actual development expertise, but it really doesn't seem like a big deal. Toronto has a lot going for it, even a project this big won't be able to fundamentally mess it up.
The bigger issue is that a city is not, fundamentally, a technological problem. A city has to keep solving the problem of how a large number of people live together in a relatively small space. People need to live safely, peacefully, be able to move around, get food, water, education, employment, get trash collected. Achieving those things (which Toronto has done better than most North American cities) is a problem of politics, economics, sociology in the sense of relations between groups. The city uses technologies to achieve these things, but they're not the fundamental driving force. When your only tool is a computer, everything looks like a screen.
11
@Walker77
The Architect's act ,the building code and city zoning bylaws will require that google hire architects, engineers, planners, and licensed developers to actually take their concepts to reality.... Google is actually the developer here just the fund which will pay for it. Not really a bad choice when they have $200b in the bank and can create NY Times buzz about promoting Toronto.
1
It is not mentioned why Sky Labs didn't select an American city. The US and its customers gave Google the opportunity to be what they are today and they show no loyalty. I will start to use Alphabet products less and will advise others of this insult.
@RH - do you have 800 acres of waterfront available for development in a city that has the Google HQ already in place?
What Google is after is to devise a city like Madeleine L'Engle's fictional Camazotz, where It, an enormous collective brain, controlled and coordinated everything down to the least excretory act or sneeze. No thanks.
5
Google, Apple, etc. are clueless about cities. What appeals to them are suburban campus office parks, the antithesis of a city. When tech companies start putting their HQs in high-rise buildings next to subway and train stations in a densely-populated walkable central city, then they'll earn their credibility. Jane Jacobs figured this out 50 years ago. Until then, tech firms should stick to what they know best -- electrons, video screens and suburban sprawl.
7
Google NYC office?
3
Hasn't the company-run city been tried a few times already, with disastrous results?
Good luck, 21st century-version of Pullman, Chicago!
5
Miller, D.L. City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America. NY: Touchstone, 1996. Pp. 481, 526, 541-549.
2
Google is one of the prime culprits for failing to develop work-from-home capabilities that would have stopped the decline in living standards in the Bay Area.
Just reflect on it..these companies develop superb techhologies like the self driving car with AI but continue to back pedal and force employees into deadening 3 hour commutes, and the ensuing carbon footprint and inefficiencies.
Common Google, FB all it takes is will power, the technology is already here.
Take a stand, do no harm etc.
6
I don’t think Sidewalk Labs has internalized criticism. You say that housing isn’t an engineering problem but a political one.... so why are they trying to use already failed modular construction gimmicks? This whole project reeks of more tech hubris. Perhaps Google is now offering branding to Real Estate project who will later regret the association (sounds familiar...)
2
This project looks like a big urbanism play in Las Vegas, where Jane Jacobs is played by Michael Douglass.
1
As a Torontonian, I am highly skeptical about this new development. I have watched in horror as so called "urban planners' have set to work on the downtown core over the last 10 years. Our waterfront district has now disappeared behind tall ugly condo projects one after another. Masses of people brought into this area that is in desperate need of expanded transit/rail/road infrastructure to support it. The Portland's area that is being talked about here would be better utilized building affordable housing and parkland for the city to once again enjoy the waterfront areas.
7
a better place would be alcatraz Island
Toronto is the worst place for business development. Backwards and obstructive in everything you do. This city is so provincial. And now you are going to ruin the last vestiges of lakefront property in the city with more ugly buildings instead of creating parkland for the citizens. Typical way this ridiculous city works.
8
I'll be happy to be watching this mass surveillance, data collection, and resale experiment from the much maligned NYC.
3
See also: the Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow, aka EPCOT.
3
The interesting thing about this whole story is the actual site for Sidewalk Labs.
The area where it will be located is a part of the port of Toronto, with deep piers and shipping canals. The port generally fell into disuse (but not disrepair), so the city wanted to do something about the site for a while now. The bright idea of Miller times was to remove the concrete built over more than a century and build a park as an "urban wetland" - as if there weren't enough wetlands in Ontario or parks in Toronto, or as if there were no demand for new housing stock. Rob Ford, characteristically, killed this plan, and, also characteristically, proposed to build a Ferris wheel there.
Tory, the current mayor, initially ran on the whole "urban wetlands" thing, but it looks like this Sidewalk Labs is a sell to build something useful there. If that's what it takes to build actual neighbourhoods on the land - I'm all in, if not quite for the reasons mentioned in the article.
1
How about doing Sidewalk Lab in Puerto Rico.
800 acres is to trivial for technology. Bush league move!
Let’s use technology to rebuild Puerto Rico for its 3.5 million people.
22
Big Brother will be watching on an epic scale. This is the stuff of science-fiction movies and not the entertaining kind. One's entire life will exist as if in a laboratory with humans as guinea pigs.
Additionally, Toronto is already vastly overcrowded with nightmarish traffic, intense automobile air pollution, and foul-tasting tap water from Lake Ontario, which gets it pollutants from chemical plants near Niagara Falls, water that flows over The Falls and into the lake.
Also, because of former Mayor Ford (remember him?), mass transit was ignored and now Toronto suffers with a system that is badly in need of expansion and repairs.
This Google scheme is not the future Toronto needs.
5
Ha ha. Fake news. Here in Toronto life is good. Real good.
5
Okay, Google, I give up. You can just run my life for me. You already have the data, and the hubris, to believe you could do a better job than I can. I must submit to the algorithms!
4
Why doesn't this article mention, as other articles do, that the projected city will be filled with data sensors and cameras of various kinds, making it a huge data- collection human "ant farm" for Google to study the daily lives of its residents?
47
As someone said, if you're not paying, you're the product. Hey, the internet has been such a great boon to mankind, let's just turn our cities over to the internet guys! Is there another planet out there to go to?
2
Wondering if Google will be paid by the Russians to install surveillance in every apartment? And if they be selling everyone's private information to China?
It's clearly now part of their culture to subvert democracy and undermine civil society as long as someone (i.e. the nation's enemies) will pay them enough. What won't they do on behalf of our enemies for money?
10
Forgive me, but, the comments from many Americans on this forum is, to say the least, laughable. Most American inner cities devolved over decades of systemic racism, only recently in an attempt to revitalize them by throwing billions of taxpayers dollars, i. e. corporate welfare, at developers to build something, anything. Among other cities, this is what has happened and continues to happen in places like Buffalo and Detroit. Developers would never build anything without this corporate welfare.
The land under discussion is at the east end ie. Portlands area, NOT, in the direct downtown core or west, this area has already been developed with more changes to come. The fact that most American cities barely make the top 50 in the world in quality of life measurements, when it comes to a discussion such as this, Americans are the LEAST qualified to judge anything.
28
That said, Toronto has little to brag about right now.
GTA traffic now - and all the time, not just at rush hour or during holiday periods - is so bad, that many of those of us living WELL outside of it, but with a need to get to its far side and beyond, actually choose going around Lake Ontario to the south and through the US, rather than dealing with the total nightmare that is Toronto.
Even with having to cross the Canada-US border twice, and even on holiday weekends (just did it re: Canadian Thanksgiving/US Columbus Day), this is by far the better alternative.
8
Since this forum is hosted by The New York Times, not, let's say The Globe & Mail, it shouldn't be a surprise that commenters have U.S. addresses; and people who think they're qualified to make sweeping generalizations about who is and is not "qualified to judge anything" would, I imagine, feel just as comfortable in New York as in Toronto. I know I do.
2
Yes - Toronto's transportation infrastructure is inadequate. But as a city -where PEOPLE LIVE, it has so much going for it, as deus02 noted: there is racism to be sure, but not the line-down-the-middle us versus them scenario that many American cities devolved into a few decades ago ( they've certainly made progress, but they have the task of un-doing a problem rather than the task of preventing a problem from taking hold).
Toronto suffers from the same financial problem that has infected the entire western world: the view that taxes should be low, that governments should leave most services to the private sector. We need a bold communitarian vision in which we all share in the development of critical public transportation infrastructure that will improve our standard of living and our health.
2
Never, ever, lose sight of the money. What does Google do? It sells advertisements. How does it get the best price for its product? By knowing every detail of every person's, life from the grandest (a search for careers) to the most intimate (stopped buying tampons - probably pregnant).
The Google model city is a model for what? A model for how Google can get even deeper into your personal life by co-oping the local government.
23
Assuming many google associates will need direct highway access and ease of use on busy roads for many varied appointments I believe Toronto would not be a "Great", google site. Even though Ottawa would be further away from the United States and Canada border, Ottawa has more to offer. A rich multilingual bio diverse economically rich region in Canada where the majority of Ottawa citizens all live, work and play making Ottawa the ideal GOOGLE site.
2
Funny - just before seeing your comment, I wrote about the difficulty of dealing with Toronto/the GTA, which those of us trying to get from Ottawa to Niagara and vice versa avoid like the plague.
And while I don't see this Google city initiative having any effect on that, I still think it is worth trying in Toronto.
1
Direct highway access???? You are missing the whole point.
1
Pray, where does Ottawa have 700 acres?
2
Not sure why all the skepticism about this. After all, Google and its Silicon Valley brethren promised that the information revolution would liberate the democratic process, and that seems to have turned out great.
18
Except in the 2016 US presidential election.
1
yes, for the Russians.
I suspect that Doug Ford, Luddite thug brother of the late Rob (I am not a crack addict) Ford, and wannabee mayor, will turn this into a municipal election issue next October.
This smells of big expenditures.
2
And "1984" is alive and well. Yikes
9
Question: how is this 800 acres of waterfront property NOT Going to be an exclusive – yuppified District/area?
7
If the city builds public housing, it will not. Simple.
My temptation towards cynicism regarding this project has been shelved in large part because I know a woman who left her job this week to join Sidewalk Labs. She's amazing and comes from a background in major construction and development projects. The carbon neutral and waste management aspects of this project interest me the most but other aspects are fascinating to me as well. As a former technologist who worked at the edge of where technology was taking shape in preparation for seeing its way into the market (i.e. 3-5 years away from being in market), I will be fascinated to see how this project stands the test of time. Creating infrastructure that can adapt to difficult to foresee situations in the future is challenging and requires added expense that may or may not realize a benefit. We can all envision an amazing location ready to take on new tenants in 3 to 7 years. But what will it look like in 25 years? Will it show us the way and be the first of many? Or will it look like an old World's Fair site before being redeveloped as something else? And if it does manage to crack the code on one or more of the challenges urban centers struggle with, will the designers of this project (like the woman I know) be thinking about how these new approaches can be done as retrofits in existing urban environments? After all, there aren't many blank slate canvases like this Toronto waterfront project, but every urban center could benefit from this sort of focused activity.
23
Yeah, but Google (excuse me, Alphabet) is about making big bucks for its shareholders and senior executives. It is not a charitable institution. It does not have our best interests at heart. It is about making the most money possible for its most influential constituents. We are the rubes being fleeced.
1
I live in Toronto. Before I read this article I was deciding to return to Montreal my hometown. Now I am reinforced by my decision. Montreal is an environmentally progressive city, warm, vibrant and very human. Google's project in Toronto feels so incredible technologically artificial and dehumanizing. It cannot but have a negative effect on the city.
12
But as a fellow dweller of another snow-inundated Canadian city (which Toronto is not, in comparison), you have to admit that those snow-melting sidewalks have appeal.
They do them all over northern Europe - I don't know why we don't do them as a matter of routine here.
5
Enjoy all the "freedom" in Quebec.
2
Google's project as of right now takes a space on waterfront between Sherbourne and DVP. It is a space currently occupied by very "warm and vibrant" car parking lots, abandoned grain silos and boat storage. It's probably half the size of the village built for Pan Am Games, and occupies an even worse site (not that the site of the village attracted ANY visitors before it was complete).
I lived in the area for a good decade up to this year. I can understand when people miss the closure of The Government (a night club located not far from the area) - but there was pretty much nothing there to miss.
1
And, presumably, Google will be very closely monitoring (and monetizing) every iota of residents' and visitors' every move.
9
They already are.
Hello Google.
5
The article correctly displays some cynicism toward the tech companies and their altruism, attitudes to the public realm and their abilities. They will want to remake the city in their image - very middle class, hipster, very probably white although that will be an unintended consequence. When I read about “making the streets suitable for driverless cars” alarm bells ring. What about the pedestrian? Driverless transit crawling along at 5 mph. No thanks. I wouldn’t necessarily oppose all they would like to do here but they will need a very strong public stakeholder power to keep them in check, to balance their fabulous wealth and the arrogance that goes with it.
2
While I share much of your skepticism, this is Canada.
We are about as racially mixed as it gets, especially Toronto, and right through our middle class.
5
Toronto has a history of this stuff. Don Mills, anyone? Whoever is running this should be made to present an essay on the relevance of Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities to our present circumstance.
6
Seems like a great place for Amazons second HQ. Would give access to the best talent from all over the world without "Trumpian" immigration discrimination, a single payer health car system that would boost Amazon's bottom line, a "liberal" city environment that values diversity and outreach.
18
Google + Amazon, that would be something!
The benevolent oligarch corporation... All of those sensors to monitor, track, and further turn you into marketing fodder.
10
This is a riveting experiment, and I for one look forward to visiting Toronto in a year or so to see what Google is doing.
I'm also amused by all the letters from Luddites decrying talking trash bins. Like Trump, some people just cannot see past the tips of their own noses.
5
Being a lifelong and recently retired resident of Greater Toronto, development of this area is long overdue. Toronto is a city choking on traffic with too little transportation infrastructure and ultra-high housing prices. The area itself is under-utilized industrial portland bordering the harbour and Lake Ontario. Development of a technically futuristic city is a worthwhile experiment for this land. Tech companies like Google will definitely need oversight to ensure their needs are not the only focus. I continue to be amazed seemingly innocuous items like smart tv's and children toys are being sold capable of listening to private conversations. Ensuring residents' privacy will also need serious consideration.
10
In the 1960's and early 70's Toronto was a city that worked pretty well compared to others. But then for decades it was a basket case of really bad planning decisions often fuelled by a misplaced desire to be superficially great and impressive. Then more recently, for some years, they've had a really good, strong, outspoken head of city planning. Recently she surprised everyone by quitting. She's had some differences with the most recent mayor but things seemed patched up. Now this? I'd like to know where she stands.
6
I lived in TO for years. There was a plan to unify the waterfront and the rest of the city, something that was and is badly needed. It was turned down for being too disruptive. Now the cost would be prohibitive. NB: the waterfront is frigid in the winters. Remote and COLD. I admire Eric Schmidt, always have, but the waterfront is not an ideal location for any kind of futuristic development unless it's entirely enclosed and heated.
5
Huh? Then why live in Canada at all. The rest of the city has no problem with out 3 month winters.
Lac Frontenac, which the Anglos have misnamed Ontario for centuries, is now so terribly polluted, since it's downstream from all the other lakes, that it stinks within a few miles of it. For that matter, even near the cleaner shores of Lake Michigan, we often notice a pronounced unpleasant fishy smell when schools are spawning...
2
The city monitors its beaches, and virtually all of them are swimmable most of the year. I live a mile from Lake Ontario and have never smelled it.
1
why not a city like Detroit, which is inexpensive and actively in the process of rebuilding?
23
And compared to Toronto -- dirt cheap! -- and definitely far more needy.
2
One more example, I fear, of the "Command and Control" power of the "Sovereign Corporations." It may prove necessary to redesign the people to fit into the plan.
7
Overthinking it. The world's oldest neighborhoods, organically grown, scaled for humans and built for pedestrian traffic, continue to appeal to us the most. A centrally-planned, high-tech modular cityscape conceived by the same mindset that brought us Apple's HQ does not inspire confidence. Even if the planners have internalized past mistakes. The very process of central planning from the ground up is risky business for the simple reason that the designers want to do something significant; something for the ages. That kind if thinking gave us Brasilia and almost gave us Ville Radieuse. Among many others. If Toronto has 800 acres to spare for an experiment that is more likely than not to go bad, then I suppose some credit is due for boldly proceeding in the face of a known danger. Others, however, might think it merely reckless.
15
This neighbourhood will be nothing like Apple's campus. Toronto is a walkable city with great public transit and that will be maintained and enhanced. Amazing all the comments that are down on this idea. I live in Toronto and welcome the innovation.
1
Housing is expensive in desirable places such as San Francisco, Vancouver, and the like because orders of magnitude more people want to live there than can ever be accommodated by the physical volume of those cities.
And no technical fixes can ever resolve that basic problem.
8
An aside: housing is not inexpensive in Toronto - - a very desirable location.
3
... for people to invest in real estate.
Try Pete innovative approach of truly using the power of the network as a foundation for this process. Instead of nearly universal reliance on small numbers of people for decision-making that is standard in both public and private sectors, try integrating the perspectives of many people, not merely any comments process but throughout the project. This will bring to bear the range of concerns and understandings that are always relevant to any undertaking in the final analysis. The problem is that some of these perspectives are virtually always neglected. Small numbers of decision makers are ill equipped to avert this. A broad and intelligently designed network on the other hand can surmount this difficulty effectively.
And I should have added that they clearly don’t understand the housing market as the article also points out. Firstly modular design is old hat and has been sometimes successful and sometimes a dismal failure depending on quality of build and so on. But the real problem preventing affordable housing is the dysfunctional way the free market operates in urban housing. It doesn’t work and is not interested in building quality housing for all life stages in the city. Only the state can do that.
11
Every time I see new developments, condos, apartment buildings, renewed neighborhoods, and beautiful new retail areas pop up in the city it makes a sad to know that I will most likely be priced out of all of them. The ideas sound amazing, but how many will be able to benefit from them? When I see the exorbitant real estate prices here in D.C., I used to wonder how so many families were apparently making so much money that so many millions of of them could afford houses that my family could never dream of. Looking at New York real estate, however, I realize that the ultra-wealthy have become real estate "scalpers", buying up multiple properties and thus raising the price on all us while getting a tax break thrown into the bargain.
When someone starts designing cities of the future that take middle class families into account, only then will articles like this be good news. Until then, reading this article makes me think that soon I will be priced out of yet another city.
33
I’m unsure about whether this is a good idea for a city that is defined by its organic growth or whether this is simply a gullible City of Toronto massively subsidizing Google’s new Canadian head office, real estate aspirations and urban tech business experiments. But then I’m pretty excited at the prospect of conversing with rubbish bins. Everything will of course be powered by Android, be totally incompatible with Mac, iOS or Windows, and the orgasmatrons won’t accept Apple Pay.
30
So you DO know about Canadian municipal politics.
Sounds like turning the place into a bad scifi movie set with far too much social engineering, of course for "everyone's good" meaning for its intended victims to become used to spending their time and money resources supporting it like a cult...
7
The winters are too cold in Canada for this
5
So we shouldn't provide housing for the disadvantaged because it gets cold in the winter?? That is absurd.
3
How do you figure? Are you somehow unaware that we've managed to build a country and cities so liveable here that they are the envy of the world?
I don't see any US cities on lists of the world's most liveable cities - not very high up, anyway.
7
Please tell me that NJ doesn't stand for New Jersey. If so...pot...kettle.
5
Another near utopian planning exercise... The Toronto waterfront as the failed Radiant City of the future, soon to become a desolate sterile architectural curiosity or under serviced slum.
11
Wow. Remember the Bauhaus city as a Machine for Living? Separation of automobiles and pedestrians? Anonymous boxes. Housing projects that have now all been torn down. Slightly higher brow van der Rohe hulks that will soon be torn down. Good luck Toronto.
8
I have spent my whole life in the oil industry.
I remember when our industry was flush with cash and profits in early 80's after the oil embargo when crude prices surged from $3 a barrel to $30 a barrel. Yes, hard to believe $3 a barrel.
The Congress even imposed a windfall profit tax etc.
The chiefs of the oil industry thought they had answers to all problems and some more - as long as they threw this excess cash at them.
So, Mobil bought Montgomery Ward telling them Mobil knows how to manage supply chain better. It went bust a few years later.
Exxon bought a company that claimed to have madeelectric motors almost beat laws of nature with efficiencies in excess of 95% etc. Went bust a few years later.
My own company, Getty Oil was one of thefounders of ESPN - which at its beginning was hemorrhaging cash like nobody's business - which they had to unload when oil prices crashed.
We built offices better than these IT companies only to start downsizing.
Yet, decades later, this same oil patch companies met the economic laws of gravity.
Google while better known as a very successful company - has many eggs on its face - when it comes to investing outside its core competencies. To name: Waymo, that electronic thermostat company, the Motorola phone - just to a few that immediately come to mind.
But Google can afford these mistakes and some more like this Toronto. Hubris knows no limits when politicians can claim credit.
Its deja vue all over again.
20
There are many who continually say that places like the Bay Area and Manhattan area do not provide enough housing because of zoning considerations. it is the very zoning ordinances that have shaped the way these city's have grown. Yes, it would be possible to develop far more high-rises in both places, but has anyone truly evaluated what that would require in terms of infrastructure (roads, water/sewer, electrical and gas grids, school systems and support jobs for all the residents that live in the new housing). Also, has anyone determined how many housing units would need to be developed to assure that the price of housing will drop so significantly that all housing prices in the region will drop to affordable and sustainable prices?
It is easy to say that more affordable housing needs to be developed, but I have yet to see any realistic program showing how much additional housing stock can be developed and how it will force the cost of housing to lower levels.
I am sure no analysis will address what happens to existing housing owners whose home prices are supposed to significantly drop in price when all this new housing comes on line.
6
This is an almost exact reversal of the formula which built the present, successful, Toronto.
Post-WWII Toronto grew under Communist planners and substantial Communist Party cultural influence, but extreme conservative political leadership, that of the Bassett, Taylor, Eaton, and allied families.
Two of Toronto's Federal MP's were Communists, soon to leave the Party when they found that Stalin had slaughtered all their Russian friends. The powerful Provincial government of the era, however, was the Big Blue Machine of Leslie Frost and his successors. The right-wing machine's chosen planner was Hans Blumenfeld, a Stalinist German expelled from the McCarthyite U.S. Go figger.
Now we have the opposite in governance. Both Federally and Provincially the city is governed by Liberal technocrats, or at least techno-wannabes, or overweening confidence and no demonstrated ability. As implementors of their hopes, they choose Google, people whose moral code is "don't be evil," definition left unsaid, as they take over the world.
Looks a wee bit dicey to me.
11
As a Torontonian, this description of my city strikes me as bizarre.
24
Correction: Joey Salzberg and A.A. McLeod, the two Toronto post-war Communists, were elected to the Provincial Legislature, not the Federal Parliament.
3
"Post-WWII Toronto grew under Communist planners and substantial Communist Party cultural influence,"
Toronto built a couple of utopian icons/monstrosities (CN tower, city hall, Gardiner expressway/Don Valley parkwy), and grew organically by eating up farmland. In other words pretty much the same growth model as 90% of rapidly growing North American urban centres.
So your odd assertion is the first suggestion of the kind Ive heard and I would have appreciated a link or two in support of what amounts to a feeble assertion. 2 communist MPs (or MLAs?) over a period of decads in what was otherwise a staid and highly conservative city that now boasts 23 federal MPs and 23 MLAs hardly counts as communist influence at all.
That said, I certainly agree the current project "Looks a wee bit dicey".
5
This will go a long way to undo the damage done by Rob Ford, the original anti-urban proto-Trump. (Killing transit deals was like his form of trashing NAFTA or Paris)
Toronto is a good spot for this sort of experiment, the only downside being that Canadians have less money compared to Americans, don't like spending what they do have, and hate that everything costs more when they do spend it. Google's billions can unstick some of that, but it will be interesting to see how this pans out.
3
Why doesn't Google try this experiment just 90 miles South West at that same time on the Lawawanna site of Bethlehem steel just South of Buffalo. That would be the real innovation. Do both the Toronto Lake front and the Buffalo Lake front at the same time. Canadian Housing prices have soared. Toronto is an immigrant and diversity Mecca. Toronto has universal health care. Buffalo has seen a constant job loss since the 70's. Low housing price, high property taxes, high sales taxes, no universal health insurance.
Why is Toronto lakefront desirable and the Buffalo lakefront not? I grew up with a view of both. Unfortunately my Greatgrandparents crossed that bridge from Canada to the US sometime between 1891 an 1896. Yet they are buried in Ft. ERie in the 1930's after their youngest sons were born in the US. Today, 2020 plus years later Canadian citizens do not move across to Buffalo.
Why is Google not doing this in Buffalo, Cleveland or Detroit?
58
"But there would be no point in doing all that if there weren’t thousands of people nearby ready to move in, as is the case in rapidly growing Toronto."
5
Because, unless things change, the American dollar is higher in value and so can get more for their money in Canada than in U.S. That is why the movie industry films a lot in Canada. Google is just following.
3
I think you mean Lackawanna.
1
There should be a name for a system of government in which a business is given control of a significant chunk of a city to "shape" it without the consent of the citizens. To me, it looks like fascism calling itself utopia, but then that's what it usually does.
56
And the alternative is ... ?
Higher taxes?
More debt?
Forced labor?
1
You are mistaken about the facts. It is a partnership with the city and province, not a giving of control to a corporation. Moreover, at present, the partnership is an agreement to pursue a year-long public consultation with input from stakeholders for how the development could take shape, and if the blueprint Sidewalk labs presents isn't good enough, the city can pass. I'm originally from Toronto and I'm excited to see what they come up with as the current state of the waterfront is a real shame. Toronto is vying to be Amazon's next major corporate base, and this kind of city experimentalism raises its profile, and may bolster the city's ability to retain and attract the right talent. If you look at the Canadian media, the reaction to the announcement is positive.
8
The name is oligarchy.
4
Strikes me as another gentrification/monetizing scheme, even if well-intended. That will be the project's inevitable end. About the housing affordability crisis in our desirable cities, next time you visit, take a look at SF and LA from your flight above. The single family sprawl goes on forever. Why aren't state, city and county officials pushing hard for dense vertical building? Is it, as I suspect, to protect the pockets of developers and real estate speculators (who also donate mightly to these politicians' campaign coffers)? To be sure, vertical density alone does not explain why Manhattan real estate is unaffordable beyond humanly possible or desirable. But in LA and SF something has to be done and soon and in those cities, vertical is the way to go. Let's allow anyone who wants to live in our cities, regardless of income level, to be able to, as it used to be before gentrification became a monster that got out of control.
5
The answer is when cities and developers built vertically they build relatively tiny spaces. A $500,000 450 sq. ft 1 bedroom begins a new baseline benchmark for ALL real estate. Who wants to live in a tiny space vs. who has to?
The answer is for hapless city planners to mandate minimum sizes for 'verticality'. No developer wants to sell a 700 sq. ft. condo when they can charge the same for a 450 sq. ft. one.
1
small spaces have more to do with the cost of vertical development on very expensive pieces of land in the urban core.
Also if buyers are willing to buy a 400 sf. apartment, that's what will get built.
5
California cities have a concern for earthquakes that drastically increase the cost of safe construction. Flexible one-story wooden houses twist and survive in earthquakes and, if they collapse, it is not with the great force that steel and concrete buildings do.
4
I read this article sort of fondly. From 1969 to 1971 I worked on my master of science in urban and regional planning at University of Toronto. The waterfront was also a project/study area because it was an underutilized mess, separated from downtown by highways. In 1971 I completed my thesis, which was sort of a work of fiction--I turned Toronto into utopia, and then went into commercial real estate when I graduated. Now I'm trying to decide if google is more like my utopian side or the real estate side.
15
Oh Boy !!!!
800 acres on Toronto's waterfront???
Here we go again... guess we didn't learn our lesson over in Vancouver when the old Expo 86 site got "gentrified" and developed.
Remember.... "Man is the only animal that will trip over the same rock twice."
7
What is your point? The old Expo lands are now a vibrant part of the city whereas before it was unaccessible industrial lands. How is that bad? Sure there was a lot of politics but that happens with any megaproject.
8
Yes! By utilizing super ultra HD wall sized TV screens and augmented reality. Sidewalk Labs can make a 250 sq. ft. condo look like 2,500 sq. ft! And sell it for $2,000 a sq ft.
4
Advancing technology is key to our survival and to our progression into a more efficient world. Companies such as Google, who prosper in places like Silicon Valley, have innovative ideas that should be welcomed. Even though their ideas could make our daily lives more productive and possibly improve the environment around us, their ideas are also very expensive. We can not progress into a tech-based future when our country as a whole is still dealing with a large gap between the poor and the wealthy. Companies like Google, who are seeking to create "Internet" cities need to adapt their plans to fit all levels of income.
21
"Gap?" Canada's taxpayer debt/GNP ratio is ~40% less than the USA's, which is terrible. That's a freakin' "gap," IMHO.
Of course, CDN isn't paying tens of trillions for its nuclear shield or its share of global medical costs .. and when their economy tanks, they fire government workers. How clever, those Canadians ..
BTW: Gord Downie, RIP, bro.
2
Bing Ding - but for US aggression around the world, why would Canada need a nuclear shield?
And how exactly is Canada not paying its 'share' of global medical costs?
It's not us being governed by the fantastically-greedy, ignorant, and world-hating Trump, but you.
5