The Wall Street Journal: Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs to build tech-focused Toronto development

TORONTO — Sidewalk Labs LLC, the city-building unit of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., will partner with the city of Toronto on a high-tech waterfront development, the first major foray of the search-engine giant into creating urban space, city and company officials said Tuesday.

The partnership offers technology experts and urban planners a blank canvas to create a blueprint for how cities of the future should be built, incorporating technology at every step of the way, according to a proposal submitted to the city by Sidewalk Labs.

“On Toronto’s eastern waterfront, we are making a bold bet that innovative technology and forward-thinking urban design can make fundamental improvements in city life,” Alphabet

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  Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said in a statement ahead of a press conference near the site of the development Tuesday.

The site, dubbed Quayside, was initially designed to rebuild a 12-acre section of Toronto’s eastern waterfront but the project will serve as a model for nearly 800 more acres of underdeveloped urban land that Sidewalk envisions can be the home for driverless cars, modular bui

ldings and sustainable thermal power generation, among other innovative features, said Sidewalk in its proposal to Toronto.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

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