Google’s sister company Sidewalk Labs dropped its massive, long-awaited master plan for Monday, providing the first detailed glimpse of its proposal for a smart-city development on Toronto’s waterfront. The 1,500-page, three-volume Master Innovation and Development Plan is dubbed Toronto Tomorrow: A New Approach for Inclusive Growth. Here are five things you need to do know about the plan: More than just Quayside The plan reveals Sidewalk Labs wants to expand beyond the Quayside development and says the 12-acre site is only Phase 1 of its plans for a much larger area of waterfront. Sidewalk Labs and its local partners plan to develop both Quayside and the western part of Villiers island, making up 7 per cent of Toronto’s eastern waterfront. The nearly 20-acre Villiers West site nearby would be home to an expanded Google Canada headquarters, as well as a mix of residential and commercial space. If innovations piloted in Quayside and West Villiers island are successful, government could choose to apply them to a broader 190-acre area of the waterfront, which Sidewalk is calling the Innovative Development and Economic Acceleration (IDEA) district. Sidewalk is proposing it would lead both the building development and other infrastructure (like the advanced power gird for example) for both Quayside and Villiers West. For the rest of the IDEA district, Sidewalk plans to develop innovation guidelines so the whole district can meet the same targets on things like as sustainability. In return for meeting sustainability and development targets, Sidewalk proposes it should get performance payments from government. It’s not clear how much Sidewalk would get. These payments would come from whichever level of government is deemed the public administrator. That could be Waterfront Toronto, or it could be another level of government. Read more:Sidewalk Labs vows its 190-acre waterfront plan will be ‘economic windfall’ for TorontoSidewalk Labs ...
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