An 800-acre strip of the city’s waterfront may show us how cities of the future will be built.
Alphabet’s urban innovation division, Sidewalk Labs, has announced a project that aims to inject modern urban design and new technologies into the city’s quayside. The aim: to “create people-centered neighbourhoods that achieve precedent-setting levels of sustainability, affordability, mobility, and economic opportunity.”
Huh? Picture streets filled with Waymo robo-taxis, slick autonomous underground trash collection, modular buildings that can be easily expanded, sustainable thermal power generation, drone-based package delivery, pervasive computing, and other techno-utopian amenities that should in theory change the way people live.
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