Yesterday , Google announced a raw incubator exclusively focused on urban publication . While more single-valued function and apps are great , let ’s hope the startup can use this program to work on a solution for the large trouble facing cities : living accommodations the 2.5 billion the great unwashed who are going to move into them by 2050 . Google needs to produce the affordable housing equivalent of the self - driving auto .
With a nidus that sounds somewhere between the big civic data projects of IBM and a hacker - concentrate nonprofit organization like Code for America , Sidewalk Labswill be aseparate Google companybased in New York that builds products and pecker around issues facing cities . Last nighttime , Google founder Larry Page suggest at some of those issue in ablog post : “ Sidewalk will focus on ameliorate urban center life for everyone by develop and incubating urban engineering to plow issues like cost of living , efficient fare and energy usage . ”
While Google is already expending plentifulness of effort around transportation ( Waze ) and energy use ( Nest ) , no tech company has managed to tackle the “ cost of keep . ” It ’s an idea deserving explore because it could intend a radical shift in the quality of life for humans living in crowded , expensive urban center . And permit ’s confront it , they ’re all rifle to be crowded and expensive .
Page ’s station concern Sidewalk Labs to Google X , which is where Google ’s autonomous elevator car program arise . While the self - drive motorcar political program has itsmany critic , it has undoubtably transformed the conversation around transportation and inspired many other mobility projects . It has give us a real - world lesson of a engineering that seemed hundred away . It has changed the way we blab about our transportation future .
employ this samemoonshot - layer thinkingto low-priced housing could put up that same roadmap to a better future for every city on the planet . At the same time , it would be a technical school solution that go beyond apps and maps — and truly affiance in setaceous urbanism issues like homelessness .
Affordable housing is one area where Sidewalk Labs could be a huge win for cities everywhere . And it would also facilitate to solve a trouble that Google itself is being blame for creating — the speedy changes bring on by a tech bubble which are force many longtime residents out of atoo - expensive city . ( I ’m looking at you , San Francisco . )
So , what does the self - driving car of low-cost housing look like ? There are a few thing I could imagine . A game - changing microunit . A way to jolly register and award low-cost apartments to those who need it most . A tech peter for urban dwellers to share resource . An online voting tool that allow citizen to support young growing . A new way to buy real estate of the realm . A transparent supermaterial that somehow assist cities broke through theirdevelopment - barring height restrictions . ( I ’m looking at you again , San Francisco . )
At its I / O keynote a few weeks ago , Google proudly unveiled a cortege ofdata - efficient Mobile River toolsaimed at helping the “ next billion ” get on-line . These are very bare solutions which will aid many people live on better living . If these same efforts to avail the developing world access and apportion information through their phones could somehow be mirrored in the quest to housing another “ next billion , ” Google ’s Sidewalk Labs will have achieved something rightfully great for cities .
[ Sidewalk Labs ]
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