One of Google's sister companies will help build a high-tech neighbourhood on Toronto's waterfront.
Sidewalk Labs, owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, won a competition to partner with Waterfront Toronto to develop the project - named Sidewalk Toronto - as part of the Quayside neighbourhood.
Tuesday's announcement, headlined by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, will see Google Canada move its headquarters to anchor the development in the city's port lands area.
``This will create a test bed for new technologies in Quayside,'' Trudeau said. ``Technologies that will help us build smarter, greener, more inclusive cities which we hope to see scale across Toronto's eastern waterfront and eventually in other parts of Canada and around the world.''
Few specifics of the development were available, but Sidewalk said the area will be a hub for urban innovation built ``from the internet up'' that will tap into Toronto's tech sector to ultimately ``improve the quality of city life.''No better place in world than Toronto for global companies like @SidewalkLabs to develop technological solutions to help address real urban challenges. Info: https://t.co/YVOXYSrexe pic.twitter.com/nbaYCB5g2S
— John Tory (@JohnTory) October 17, 2017
``This is the culmination on our side of almost 10 years of thinking about how technology could improve the quality of people's lives in the ways that have been defined already, whether it's inequality and access and opportunity and entrepreneurship,'' Schmidt said.Who are @sidewalklabs? Since 2015, Sidewalk has explored how new technologies can solve big urban problems. Led NYC's post-9//11 revival with transformation of Manhattan's Far West Side into Hudson Yards. pic.twitter.com/OCbRug3ZMw
— John Tory (@JohnTory) October 17, 2017
In Toronto, @sidewalklabs will work with new Quayside neighbourhood (see map) to scale eastern Waterfront, more than 325 hectares, one of North America's largest underdeveloped urban land. pic.twitter.com/0TwRI1qjpV
— John Tory (@JohnTory) October 17, 2017