
Sidewalk Labs’ Plan for Toronto - lawrenceyan
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb9nd4/sidewalk-labs-midp-plan-for-toronto-quayside-is-a-democracy-grenade
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mabbo
On the one hand, I appreciate the level of innovation and forward thinking
that Google is doing here. It's a lot of neat ideas and designs.

But on the other hand, I don't like the idea of a private company deciding how
a city should develop- especially not my city. No matter what they say, they
are a for-profit publicity-traded company whose goal, always, is ROI for
investors. And that conflicts with the goals of city management, where the
goal is the benefit of the public and not just those with money.

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cromwellian
Isn't this how almost all redevelopment happens? The city puts out a call for
proposals, and various architectural firms and builders submit master-planned
mega proposals, and one gets picked?

Why is SideWalk labs any different than redevelopment projects that happened
elsewhere?

I mean, this project is for a location (77 hectares) that is barely bigger
than the Apple campus (71 hectares). They've proposing to develop a tiny slice
of the city, about the size of most large condominium projects that localities
approve.

If SideWalk Labs was not associated with Alphabet, but say, one of these
([https://www.cpexecutive.com/post/2017-top-development-
firms/](https://www.cpexecutive.com/post/2017-top-development-firms/)) I bet
it pretty much would have gone under the radar, and people would be enjoying
their new waterfront without batting an eye.

~~~
v7p1Qbt1im
Of course they would. But it‘s an Alphabet company, so it‘s automatically a
distopian nightmare and basically cyberpunk. /s

Which is not to say that the actual project plan shouldn‘t be heavily
scrutinized. But a lot of the comments around it are just FUD.

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m463
> This data will be de-identified, the company claims, and much of it will be
> made available to residents and planners

I wonder how much of this will be re-indentified.

For example, the path and browsing habits of someone as they travel through a
store can be completely anonymous. But when they go to the register, it can be
attached to a specific individual.

~~~
username444
Ideally, this data should be _fully_ publicly available. Zero exemptions for
Sidewalk to harvest data that isn't released publicly. This is the only way to
ensure accountant.

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mymythisisthis
It looks like Toronto might get a modern version of this
[https://www.wired.com/2010/08/trash-sucking-
island/](https://www.wired.com/2010/08/trash-sucking-island/)

~~~
bobthepanda
A key distinction is that Roosevelt Island does not really operate outside of
the existing municipal and state legal frameworks of New York, whereas
Sidewalk Labs is asking for changes in legal frameworks for its redevelopment.

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dsfyu404ed
There's eventually gonna be a fundamental disagreement here. Google wants
control in order to execute on its vision for this project. Governments don't
give up control without bloodshed.

The only wildcard is what the people want and quite frankly that could still
turn out to be anything because it seems like the masses are mostly apathetic
to both sides at this point.

I'm not sure how this is gonna turn out but I am willing to bet that no matter
how it goes "pfffft, yet another boondoggle" will be how we'll look back on it
in 10yr.

~~~
bobthepanda
The government is the one ceding control in this instance via Waterfront
Toronto, but even then there was an original agreement to what was actually
being given up, which seems like it's being pushed aside by Sidewalk Labs.

People at least have a say in how government is run; a lot of times they're
not motivated to, but with enough public protest the public has turned the
large ship of government around (see: freeway revolts of the 1970s). In
general I may not trust the government, but I certainly trust it a lot more
than a corporation which I have no stake in and no hope of influencing at all.

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saeranv
Reading through their plan on sustainability:
[https://storage.googleapis.com/sidewalk-toronto-ca/wp-
conten...](https://storage.googleapis.com/sidewalk-toronto-ca/wp-
content/uploads/2019/06/23143305/MIDP_Vol.2_Chap.4_Sustainability.pdf)

I think tracking building energy and indoor ambient conditions in order to
optimize the former is a good example of how collected data should be used.
There's a lot of subtlety in being able to manage building systems to run
passively (i.e using natural ventilation to condition buildings) that are too
complex for facility managers or residents. This is a problem domain that
desperately requires predictive tools, integrated with effective
visual/interactive methods for dynamic feedback from occupants and owners.

One area that could be improved in their write-up, as it stands now, is a
better discussion of demand-side energy management (meaning controlling the
energy _demand_ that is a function of the architecture, material elements, to
be resolved with passive and active systems of energy _supply_). This proposal
reflects the kind of thinking I always see from engineers/energy modelers,
which tends to tackle energy reduction primarily from the supply-side (i.e
with more optimized HVAC systems) and omit strategies to reduce the the
demand-side of the energy equation.

There is a section on using Passive House methods which addresses this in
terms of building insulation, window thermal properties etc, but that's
primarily for small residential use, and starts to show it's limitations once
you get into multi-family housing, and commercial buildings. At that scale
there's a lot more interesting opportunities to coordinate energy demand
trade-offs that they could explore. For example, there's the classic case of
optimizing window size and placement to reduce heating loss while increasing
daylight, or trying to reduce peak loads, typically associated with cooling
energy, versus designing for annual energy reduction associated with heating
energy (in Toronto). The pace of the design cycle means most of this kind of
optimization is done using rules of thumbs, even though the simulation engines
to model this exists.

I also think this is important because proper consideration of demand-side
energy forces you to grapple with the building's interaction with the local
environment. Therefore it's the most obvious way in which the building energy
logic translates to issues of urban identity and scale. Without that nuance,
you just end up with abstract, large boxes crammed with hyper-efficient HVAC
systems (i.e the worst of modernism). You need the constraining factor of
demand-energy to provide some needed traction for the architecture.

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magwa101
What could possibly go wrong?

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anth_anm
Facebook gets to control money, Google gets to control cities.

Seems fair and totally reasonable.

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evancox100
In what world is "wood" a novel construction material? What am I missing?

Also, from a legal standpoint how is this any different from the tens of
thousands of planned developments put together by other corporations, other
than the fact that it's Google and not a traditional real estate developer?

~~~
bobthepanda
Wood in tall buildings is a relatively new development; historically it hasn’t
been allowed for fire concerns.

[https://theweek.com/articles/816653/how-build-skyscraper-
woo...](https://theweek.com/articles/816653/how-build-skyscraper-wood)

