Sidewalk Labs offered a glimpse at a handful of high-tech prototypes it hopes to launch in a waterfront smart city it has proposed for Toronto on Friday.
Jesse Shapins, Director of Public Realm, Sidewalk Labs, discusses the modular pavement that feature lighting, selective heating and porous slabs designed to soak up water into a stormwater management system, during a media preview of Open Sidewalk – Winter Warmer in Toronto on Friday, March 1, 2019. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Tijana Marti
The Alphabet Inc.-backed entity showed off technologies it previously teased, including hexagonal sidewalks that light up to indicate a change in a street?s usage and heat up to reduce ice and snow, and ?building raincoats? that can adjust to provide cover from cold weather or rain but open up in warm temperatures. Sidewalk Labs has long touted the innovations as a way it believes it can transform communities ? including the swath of prime land known as Quayside that it hopes to develop with Waterfront Toronto.
?It is totally different to see it in its real world context and understand its real impact,? said Jesse Shapins, the director of public realm at Sidewalk Labs, who said nailing down exactly what building either the raincoats or streets would cost is tough, but he believes they will be ?comparatively less? than a glass ?arcade? walkway.
?Starting to do something like this helps us learn about some of the cost elements, but we imagine doing them on a larger scale and more of them, t...