still no jet pack

Sidewalk Labs have been talking recently about their project targeting the eastern waterfront of Toronto. It's an Alphabet/Google company pushing new ideas about ways to develop the public realm. Wrapped up in mobility and sustainability statements are more thoughts on urban space monitoring and monetisation.

The project seems to be offering a surprisingly conservative future view. I'd have expected more boundaries to be pushed but, at least from the illustrations, it all looks very safe. There's a tree-lined pedestrianised zone, with a cable car and a few bicycles. The architecture is glass-boxy and in the distance is a converted legacy building with a tall chimney. Kind of London South Bank along by the Tate Modern, maybe?

I can also remember in downtown Toronto, walking around a series of underground links between buildings. I think it is called PATH and I was told it was a way to stay cosy during the winter months. It makes it all the more intriguing that the same city should be selected for this other kind of project.

Then there's another Sidewalks illustration, this time of the walkways and tramways. A few Google driverless cars have been pasted on, implying modernity.

Aside from the cable car, it could almost be a central Manchester image, with the tram intersection and a few bicycles.

In some European cities trams can also take outboard bikes, similar to the way that ski-buses operate. Here's a Stuttgart to Degerloch example.

Another example from London would be the Airline cablecar interchange which, on both sides of the Thames, goes into a predominantly pedestrian area, with close and deliberately synchronised adjacent tube, ferry and light railway links. I know this one well, because it was part of my regular commute for a while. The cablecar would work strange hours though. A late morning start and an early evening finish. Miss the last one and it would be necessary to take a whole different route to get back. Same thing in high winds.

I decided to dig out a concept sketch of the cablecar, from 2010, before it had been built.
sketch. The glass building also housed a series of exhibits about modern multi-modal city infrastructures. Maybe the Alphabetters should take a look at some of the output?

Then there's their concept of the underground infrastructure for services. The diagram looks like a Disneyworld cross-section, but I'm thinking of my experiences in la Défense, Paris, where the underground tunnels are huge and fairly confusing.

I used to travel fairly regularly to the area's Sofitel, yet taxi drivers would regularly get lost. Of course, the scale is much bigger than the Sidewalk project, with many tall buildings creating a commensurate demand for services.

Look at la Défense from surface level and it's impressively car free. It even has some of those autonomous shuttle buses.

Okay, maybe there are only three of them. Hardly enough to support a daily footfall of 500,000. But it's the edges of the zone that also tell a story.

'It always works in the PowerPoint', as the expression goes.