{"id":1040,"date":"2018-01-22T13:25:57","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T13:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/tl\/learned-sidewalk-labs-learned-jane-jacobs\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T15:16:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T15:16:20","slug":"learned-sidewalk-labs-learned-jane-jacobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/thought-leadership\/ai-technology-and-innovation\/learned-sidewalk-labs-learned-jane-jacobs\/","title":{"rendered":"What We Learned From Sidewalk Labs (and What They Learned From Jane Jacobs)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t\t\t
<\/div>\n\t\n\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\tAI, Technology and Innovation\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat We Learned From Sidewalk Labs (and What They Learned From Jane Jacobs)\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\tSidewalk Labs wants Toronto’s Quayside to become the global example for urban living. Read what we learned from their CEO Dan Doctoroff.\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nFast forward to 2018, and another big American thinker, Dan Doctoroff, is aiming to join a new urban revolution in Toronto, this one fueled by data more than division.\n\nDoctoroff would balk at any comparison to Jacobs, who made her name as a writer and rabble-rouser. He’s a corporate leader and builder. But he recognizes they both would see the power of sustainable neighbourhoods as a bedrock to any future city.\n\nA former deputy mayor of New York, who help lead the city’s renaissance after 9\/11, Doctoroff is CEO of Sidewalk Labs, a company he created with Google co-founder Larry Page to radically change the way design our cities.\n\nSidewalk Labs is now focused on Toronto, where they’ve won the right to build a 12-acre community called Quayside on the downtown waterfront \u2014 an urban lab, really, where up to 5,000 people will live, work and play. They’ll do that by harnessing technology to reduce the financial, environmental and emotional cost of city-dwelling.\n\n\u201cA set of technologies are converging that can fundamentally bend the curve on the quality of life,” Doctoroff says.\n\nHe calls it a \u201cfourth urban revolution,” following the steam revolution that gave us trains and the connected city, the electric revolution that gave us the vertical city, and the car revolution that gave us the sprawling city.\n\nDoctoroff spoke at the most recent session of RBCDisruptors, our regular series on innovation, disruption and how technology is changing the way we live. You can listen to the full conversation on our podcast on iTunes<\/a> or SoundCloud<\/a>.\n\nHere are some of the highlights:\n

1. If It’s Technologists Versus Urbanists, We All Lose<\/h4>\nDoctoroff and his Sidewalk Labs team studied 150 so-called smart cities around the world and found none had worked. Simple reason: they didn’t harness humanity. Too many tried to impose master plans (the stuff of urbanists) and master technologies (the stuff of techies) on residents, rather than letting them play with technology and see what might emerge. \u201cCities cannot be planned all the way down to the last detail. You want people’s creativity and imagination and ideas.”\n

2. We Need to See Cities As the New Smartphone<\/h4>\nQuayside will be a platform for others to build on, with apps, systems and buildings that connect with each other through a kind of open-source neighbourhood. \u201cWhat makes smartphones so revolutionary is that they enable through reasonably open APIs, for people all over the world to build on top of it, creating things that no one ever imagined were possible, and that’s what gives it the power that it has.”\n

3. Diversity Will Matter; Inclusion More So<\/h4>\nToronto is renowned for its diversity but its inclusiveness is what caught Doctoroff’s eye. People mix easily in the city, and the inflow of 100,000 people a year hasn’t led to any signs of social fray. This was critical to Sidewalk Labs’ decision to focus on Toronto rather than the other 51 cities it surveyed in North America. \u201cPeople here (are) more open to new approaches and new ideas\u2026 If Amazon sees what we see here, it wouldn’t even be close.” Diversity will define Quayside, but its inclusions is what will make it relevant globally.\n

4. Avoiding a Digital Palace<\/h4>\nDiversity is about more than people’s background. Quayside will need a vibrant mix of income groups and lifestyles if it’s to be useful as a lab. In other words, it can’t be a shiny palace on the hill for technologists. Doctoroff thinks a key to drawing middle-income families, including from the suburbs, will be its ability to meld community design and building to cut housing costs. He thinks Quayside’s living costs will be 15\u201320% cheaper than elsewhere in the city. \u201cImagine for that family that makes $80,000 a year, if you can save them 15%, or $12,000 a year, that’s a meaningful change in people’s lives.”\n

5. Building a Mobility Lab<\/h4>\nQuayside’s first priority is mobility. Only autonomous-driving vehicles. A lot of vehicle and bike sharing. And experimentation in pathway design, from tighter corners (efficiency) to curved roads (aesthetics) to bigger sidewalks and laneways (open space). Doctoroff thinks Quayside’s design will reduce the footprint of roads and driveways, which take up 30\u201340% of North American cities. \u201cIf you can reclaim that, you can double the amount of public space, putting everyone within a very short walk of a park.”\n

6. An Environmental Moonshot<\/h4>\nDoctorff is aiming for \u201cthe first climate positive community in the world.” That starts with buildings, which in Canada consume a lot of energy. The deep waters of Toronto’s harbour may act as a heating and cooling system. Trees along the waterfront can also help buffer residents from the lake’s winds as they walk or bike. And underground service corridors can feed electricity and fibre-optic cables to residents \u2014 along with goods to local shops and the removal of waste.\n

7. Privacy Remains a Paramount Challenge<\/h4>\nQuayside has three guiding principles for privacy. First, protections will be built into all products. Second, all data collected will be used to improve quality of life, and not for commercial purposes. Third, the process used to develop these policies will be open and collaborative. Doctoroff says Toronto has the chance to create \u201ca global standard” for privacy.\n

8. Toronto As a Global Hub<\/h4>\nDoctoroff says Toronto has the chance to draw urban thinkers, and developers, from around the world, in a way Jacobs never envisioned. If Quayside works, cities from China to Nigeria will pay attention \u2014 and those who help build it will have a global market. He thinks the project may actually create a new kind of Silicon Valley, around city-building. \u201cOne of the great opportunities for Toronto is to set the global example for what urban living can actually be, and to become the hub of urban innovation.”\n