Google has entered the realm of city planning and development. Google’s sister company, Sidewalk, has contracted with the Canadian government to build a city from the “internet up” in a Toronto neighborhood called, Quayside. This neighborhood is located along the waterfront; therefore, Sidewalk and Toronto are tasked with reimagining and redesigning the city experience for locals.
This city is expected to be immersed in technology. The city of Toronto and the company have done lots of research as they have spent the last year gathering intel from local residents on how to shape the tech-enabled neighborhood. Therefore, the company is not going directly to the drawing boards and developing a plan but rather is looking to gain insights from regular people to drive their creations. Sidewalk also envisions this city to employ enabling technology that gathers realtime data and adjusts accordingly. For example, the technology within the city would gather data about traffic patterns and adjust the traffic flow to lessen congestion. Furthermore, it would gather data about pedestrian traffic and redirect vehicular traffic so there is no clash between the two groups. There would also be features that would enable heated sidewalks that would detect ice and melt it by automatically heating. There are many other technological integrations that have been brainstormed.
There are, however, many concerns regarding this type of city. The primary concern revolves around the data that is being collected and used to drive this agile technology. Who would govern the data? Who is in charge of protecting the data? Who is even collecting all this data? Moreover, there are many legal ramifications when it comes to this type of project.
In conclusion, this project stands to be the future of city planning and technology. It would truly be fascinating and an incredible experience to live in a tech-enabled city. Its potential has no ceiling and can really change this world as we know it.
Sources:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/29/google-city-technology-toronto-canada-218841
This is no doubt the future of cities. I only worry about the potential for misuse and breach of data on such a massive scale. By involving technology more and more in our daily lives to the point where everything around us collects data on us just adds more points of vulnerability for potential hacks. Legislation is going to need to be put in place that properly manages the transformation technology will provide to our urban landscape. People are also going to need to decide if they are comfortable with living in an environment with little to no privacy. I am curious to see how this evolves over time.
I am curious as to the legal ramifications of the this Google City; While the city would have exciting and innovative features being completely immersed in technology, I can’t help but wonder how Google will deal with privacy issues. I feel as though every interaction in the city would be monitored and collected for data; is this something that we are going to have to accept, or will it come with controversy?
The world moves too fast for this sort planning. It’s been tried over and over again. Railroads didn’t plan for airlines. Kodak didn’t plan for digital cameras. TV networks didn’t plan for cable which didn’t plan for streaming. Nokia didn’t plan for Blackberry which didn’t plan for iPhones. And 20 years ago nobody planned for Google. Department stores didn’t plan for malls which didn’t plan for Amazon. All of the failures were run by smart people easily equal to the the naive planners at Google. It is conceit to believe you can plan the lives of others on such a vast scale.