The plug was pulled five years ago on a Google plan to build a digitally connected neighborhood in Toronto. The innovative opportunities it suggested — and the privacy questions it raised — have not gone away.
Five years ago this month, Sidewalk Labs, then a sister company of Google, pulled the plug on plans to build a high-tech city neighborhood of the future on the lakeshore of Toronto. Pitched as a digitally hyperconnected community where everything from parking to waste collection to air conditioning would be built “from the Internet up,” the plan collapsed under the weight of concerns about what Google would do with troves of new data about people’s everyday lives.
Weiterlesen: CA: Ontario: Toronto: Lessons From a Failed Tech Urbanist Dream
A Google-backed proposal to turn an underused section of Toronto waterfront into a tech hub holds relevant lessons about privacy and data.
Five years after the failure of Google-affiliated Sidewalk Labs’ proposal to build a hyperconnected, tech-forward planned community in Toronto, Stephen Goldsmith reflects on the lessons that planners learned — and forgot — from the experiment.
Weiterlesen: CA: Ontario: Toronto: Why a Failed ‘Smart City’ Is Still Relevant
Infrastructure is the foundation that cities are built on, but making sure that infrastructure doesn’t degrade with time and use can be a complex task.
Technology being developed at Western seeks to aid in that aim - integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning, with the use of state of the art tools like aerial and underwater drones, laser scans, and high-speed cameras to name a few.
In a significant move toward smart city innovation, Kirkland has become the first municipality in Quebec to implement NoTraffic’s artificial intelligence-powered traffic management system. The groundbreaking installation, emerging from a strategic partnership between NoTraffic and Orange Traffic, marks a new era in urban mobility for the region.
“With the new development, we needed to look at our roadwork and find a solution for the flow of traffic,” Kirkland Mayor Michel Gibson told The Suburban. “We needed a way for cars to go from point A to point B, and this is an intelligent solution for cars, bikes, and pedestrians to have safety and efficiency on the roadways.”
Weiterlesen: CA: Quebec: Kirkland starts smart traffic management with new technology
Project uses smart technology to provide critical information on infrastructure, atmospheric conditions
‘Work smarter, not harder’ aren’t just words to live by for Western engineering professor Ayan Sadhu.
For Sadhu, Canada Research Chair in Smart and Sustainable Civil Infrastructure, it’s how cities like New York, Singapore and Seoul grew to become global hubs for economic, cultural and political excellence and how smaller centres like London, Ont. can continue to advance.
Weiterlesen: CA: Ontario: London: Western campus acts as ‘living lab’ for building smart cities