By Nancy Johnson SanquistIssue 11 – Spring 2019 pages 30 – 33Tags: cities • sustainability • innovation

The introduction:  Google as urban planner
It comes as no surprise that Google conducts experiments all over the world in its research and development offices, but to hear that it is experimenting with an abandoned twelve-acre neighborhood in Toronto – now that is unexpected.
This urban planning venture, “Sidewalk Toronto,” is being designed by Sidewalk Labs, a peer company with Google under the Alphabet umbrella. In a response to a proposal issued by Waterfront Toronto to redevelop what was known as the Quayside property, Sidewalk Labs won the rights to be an innovation and funding partner with the Urban Development Corporation, and then committed $50 million to the project. They agreed to create an eco-friendly, smart neighborhood that could be a showcase for Sidewalk Labs’ innovative technologies and new urban concepts.
An interesting motivation behind Sidewalk Toronto was also the concept of involving academia and the public in the creation of this mixed-use urban experiment. An “Urban Innovation Institute” was planned to be a quasi-academic institution, which would be a place for collaboration and testing of ideas for urban regeneration. In addition, there were concepts for public participation in discussions, temporary pop-up experiments, and design jams along with embedded sensors, which would control building environments, traffic lights, and everything needed to support ambient sensing in the neighborhood. And, more importantly, the development would be a carbon-negative energy revitalization project.
The context:  a new revolution transforming everything as we know it
We are at the beginning of new era called the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” as introduced in 2015 by the leader of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab. Driven by twelve new innovative technologies, this revolution will mean a fundamental change in the global economy, society, and, certainly, how we plan for, design, construct, operate, and manage places.
Smart cities are very much part of the blending of these new technologies with urban design and management, and they signify a new type of work in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This new type of work requires the kind of collaboration between public entities and private enterprises like what is happening in Toronto – a collaboration that “helps defray costs, solve pressing problems, and increase benefits for government, citizens and industries.”[i]
The story of Sidewalk Toronto represents a new form of experimentation going on in urban environments around the world; it is thoroughly explored in Life After Carbon, the new book by John Cleveland and Peter Plastrik.
This book gives us hope by identifying twenty-four cities in the world (nine in the US, seven in Europe, two in Australia and Canada, and one city each in Asia, South Africa, and South and Central America) that are called Urban Climate Innovation Labs (UCIL) and are tackling climate change head-on. Now Google, one of the largest technology companies in the world, has become an urban planner and developer in this new transformation of cities in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The concept:  The Urban Climate Innovation Lab defined
It is the urban climate change experimentation that attracted authors John Cleveland and Peter Plastrik to Toronto and its UCIL as a core theme for the book. The authors describe the UCILs as:
“…cities that have come to understand themselves, their place in the world, in a new way and act boldly on their changed awareness. They take to heart the challenge of climate change. They publicly commit to do more about it than many national governments have pledged. They immerse themselves in figuring out what they can do. And they start doing it, despite the many technical, political, economic and social difficulties involved.”[ii]
The authors describe how these forward-thinking cities are redefining every aspect of the “city.” This redefinition includes buildings, streets, and neighborhoods (like Sidewalk Labs), as well as the entire infrastructure of a city that is comprised of the supply and demand of water, energy, transportation, natural elements, and waste disposal.
The authors are also trying to change the way the public thinks and behaves in cities and how the outside world identifies with a city’s brand. And urban residents cannot do it without a top-down belief in what they are doing, which requires each city’s mayor’s leadership.
It is no surprise that Dan Doctoroff is CEO of Sidewalk Labs. He served under the change-leader Michael Bloomberg, when Bloomberg was mayor of New York City, as deputy mayor for economic development, which included a large environmental and economic plan, PlaNYC and the first truly digitized neighborhood in the world, Hudson Yards.
It is not only mayors who have a big role to play in the design of these innovative responses to climate change, but a huge cast of characters including:

the leaders of local governments, civic institutions, business and academic institutions;…