Would you live in a town Google built?

I found this video by Nick Paris, who lives in Toronto apparently.  He does a really good job at gleaning the very limited details out of the initial plan.  Here's the basics: Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has a unit called Sidewalk Labs.  Sidewalk's mission is to figure out how to make cities better using today's ever changing technology.  They were looking for a place to try out these ideas in an actual community, and decided on an area of the Toronto waterfront known as Quayside (pronounced keyside).  So it's an empty chunk of land right now, and prone to flooding, which seems like a dodgy place to start.  But, hey, they're Google (sort of), they fart money, they can afford it.

They're going to spend a year planning with the local development people, and getting it up to spec on the flood issue.  Then they are going to build a neighborhood with "modular" buildings.  Yeah, that's the fancy word for trailer parks, but this will be a new kind of modular.  The building will have a strong outer framework, and minimal stuff inside.  This way, either they will switch modules out, or change the insides quickly somehow, when a building changes purpose.  So far, that sounds good.

Sidewalk developers will try to get a chunk, maybe 20%, of energy from renewable sources in the area itself.  This will be done with heat and solar collection, it appears.  Again, sounds cool.  Then they will try to encourage people to walk or ride bikes as much as possible in the neighborhood.  Sounds good, except, this is Toronto.  CANADA.  They have winter... SERIOUS winter.  So the bike riding may suffer half of the year.  Even so, sounds good.

There will also be sensors all over the freakin' place, which means your every move will likely be tracked even more than it is in our current world.  That could get really crazy.  I mean, will the toilet send you a text message if you take  a big dump and nearly clog it, like "eat more fiber this afternoon or you'll be banned from pooping in the neighborhood."  I doubt it will go that far, but who knows what it will be like in a completely sensor rich environment.  This is a double edged sword and will probably be good and bad in ways.

Another thing is that they will have "taxibots" (as a former taxi driver, that bums me out) and "vanbots" to drive people around.  They ultimately want to ban traditional vehicles from the neighborhood, except for emergency vehicles.  So... no old guys with classic cars living there, and no rat rods.  But also, no assholes doing 70 mph down a residential street at 3am.

The housing is aimed to be affordable for a much wider group of people.  That's good, Toronto is, in many ways, one of the more progressive cities out there, and rent is fucking ridiculous from what I hear.  Affordable housing, starting with tiny units of about 150 square feet, will be available, as will larger units and some kind of new, creative financing.  So what does that mean?  Yeah, you guessed it, in a couple years, you to could be Korbin Dallas from The Fifth Element, except you'd be out of work because he was a taxi driver.  Lelu multipass?  I doubt it.  


OK, not exactly what it will look like, but it is about the right size. 

So, will Quayside in Toronto show us the future?  Or will it be a lame-ass group of boring tech-tards trying to hack the taxibots to pick-up strippers or drive their friends out onto the Lake Ontario ice in the winter?  Who knows?  Will Quayside look as stupid in 40 years as Tomorrowland in Disneyland looked in 1995? 

Hey, Google and their co-companies have a shitload of money and know tech.  They will probably come up with a ton a really good things to help our cities in the future.  But will it be a place we want to live?  I really don't know.  Time will tell. 

Here's the feature story in The Atlantic about this project.

Here's a short promo video that makes the idea look really good.