Toronto
The Role of Tech Giants in the Smart City
April 5th, 2022From the Sidewalk of the City to the Sidewalk of the Building
July 6th, 2021
The Post-COVID Urban Agenda: Cities Should Be Smart but MUST Be Fair
Some of the most symbolic images of the past year have been of empty city centers. Deserted images Times Square, Covent Garden, Champs-Élysées, and Shibuya commercial district would have been impossible to capture before the lockdowns and stay-at-home orders that COVID-19 brought about. Our cities have felt the greatest impact of the pandemic and this […]

A Tale of Two Smart City Approaches: Toronto & Barcelona
“This is a tale of two cities — Toronto and Barcelona — that may hold important lessons for others around the world. Both have big ambitions to change the way they operate but reflect very different visions of how smart cities should be run,” writes John Thornhill, Innovation Editor at the Financial Times, in an […]

‘We’ Don’t Sell Flexible Office Space, ‘We’ Sell Modern Urban Lifestyles
WeWork has created a lot of buzz with its flexible contracts and millennial-hipster style branding for what is essentially a “Regus-esque” office real-estate play. Its sister firms in the education and residential spaces have not troubled the stance of critical investment experts who have sometimes painted WeWork as the symbol of over-funding in the startup […]

Google Goes Underground with its Toronto Smart City Project

Timber Skyscrapers, Smart Paving, Weather Resistant Outdoor Spaces… Google’s Smart City Project in Toronto
Since Alphabet gave birth to Google’s smart city sister company, Sidewalk Labs, we have been wondering what a “city built by Google” would look like, how it would function, and what innovative features it might include. Over the past year or so, since the announcement that Toronto has been chosen as the location for its […]