It's no longer financially viable, says the urban design business.
The Alphabet-owned urban design business Sidewalk Labs on Friday revealed that it would no longer be pursuing its smart city plans to transform Toronto's eastern waterfront into what it had dubbed as a "global model for combining cutting-edge technology and great urban design to dramatically improve quality of life".
Read more: CA: Ontario: Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs cans Toronto smart city project
Google's sister firm Sidewalk Labs has scrapped a plan to build a smart city in Canada, citing complications caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
For several years it had pursued ambitions to build a digital-first city in Toronto "from the internet up".
Chief executive Dan Doctoroff blamed "unprecedented economic uncertainty" for abandoning the plan.
Read more: CA: Ontario: Coronavirus: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto
Global initiatives deploy technology to improve quality of life in urban centres
When nudged about the possibility of Sidewalk Labs striking up an initiative in Vancouver, the response from one representative of the Google sister company was rather coy.
Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOGL) subsidiary specializing in using innovation to address urban issues ranging from transportation to energy consumption, is best known for its smart-city ambitions along Toronto’s waterfront.
Read more: CA: Vancouver: Sector leaders tout smart cities as wise investment
Google affiliate Sidewalk Labs is walking away from building a smart-city development in Toronto after two and a half years of controversy over its origins, overreach, and privacy and financial implications.
The Alphabet Inc. subsidiary won the right to plan a community called Quayside on the downtown Toronto lakeshore in 2017, hoping to build a 12-acre neighbourhood “from the internet up.” In partnership with the tripartite government agency Waterfront Toronto, the New York urban-planning firm imagined a place filled with new technologies such as heated sidewalks, robotic garbage systems, and, crucially, sensors to learn about how people move about cities in ways that could inspire even more innovations.
Read more: CA: Ontario: Google affiliate Sidewalk Labs abandons Toronto smart-city project
Some City of Kingston snowplows can now be tracked online, thanks to a nine-month Smart City pilot with Bell.
Residents can visit CityofKingston.ca/Snow and see the tracker offering data of when the last time roads were snowplowed. The “last plow completed” data notes a range from “less than 4 hours ago” to “16 to 24 hours ago”, shown in different colours on a Google Map.
Read more: Kingston Snowplow Tracker Now Online, Part of Smart City Pilot with Bell