By Sidewalk Labs
We explore the innovations and ideas that will transform our cities.
As you might have heard, Sidewalk Labs became a part of Google at the beginning of 2022. So City of the Future has been on hiatus...BUT I’m still creating podcasts that I think CotF listeners would like. And I’d like...
E-S-G. If you haven’t heard that term before, it stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance. It’s a framework that investors use to help them decide whether or not to put money into a company. Over the last 20 years, investors...
In the early 20th century, many U.S. factories were located in urban cores, where workers could easily access their jobs. But the benefit of proximity also meant workers lived near loud, polluting factories. And as we know from the history...
Innovation ecosystems — places where companies and anchor institutions cluster and connect with startups, incubators, and smaller accelerators — are far from a new urban trend. As technology has become core to our economy in the past few decades, big...
Cities throughout the U.S. (and around the world) are struggling with the many issues that come with neighborhood growth and displacement. But what if, instead of being negatively impacted by development, residents benefited from it instead? In this episode —...
Cities across the U.S. are suffering from dire housing crises. Housing supply is low, and prices are high — in some cities, sky high. And wages and income aren't keeping up. Many struggle to make rent, let alone save for a...
The process of real estate development is critical to urban life. Without it, we’d have no homes, no stores, no community centers. But development isn’t working for everyone. All too often, new projects advance without sufficient concern for affordability, economic...
The pandemic has forced us to reexamine and reimagine how we use one of our most precious public spaces: our streets. From outdoor dining to expanded bike lanes, cities have been re-designing streets so they can be better shared by...
For about a century, architects and developers have dreamed of the promise of factory-based construction — after all, if Henry Ford revolutionized the auto industry with assembly lines, why shouldn’t we be able to make buildings in factories, too? But, in...
In an era of remote work, when people can work from anywhere, where will they choose to live? And what can cities do to set themselves apart from the competition? In this episode, we look at the ways remote work...
Generative design is the process of automatically producing thousands of designs based on goals and constraints you feed into a computer. In this episode, we ask: could you apply generative design to something as complex as the urban planning process?...
To save our planet, we’ll need to reduce emissions — fast. And if we’re serious about addressing climate change, we’ll need to address one of our biggest carbon emitters: buildings. That doesn’t just go for the new, shiny skyscrapers with access...
Hi City of the Future listeners! We've been hard at work behind the scenes, and we're so excited to share a little sneak peek of season three. Stay tuned — and you'll hear more from us in the fall!
Hi, City of the Future listeners! Remember when we asked if anyone would like to listen to a pilot of a new podcast? Well good news — that podcast launches today! It’s called the Sidewalk Weekly, and it's a...
Hi City of the Future listeners! In between seasons, we've been working on a new podcast idea. (Don't worry, CotF isn't going anywhere!) We'd love to know what you think about this potential new show. If you're interested in listening...
In the last century, we started to design our buildings in a way that was divorced from the environment. We made sealed, hermetic structures that never moved and never changed. But now, technologies and materials are allowing our buildings to...
For a sustainable future, we need to turn away from fossil fuels and turn towards electricity. But to electrify everything — our cars, our buildings, our entire neighborhoods — we'll need to make some big changes first. In this episode,...
Getting around cities today can be challenging. Streets are congested and chaotic, and new modes seem to be popping up daily, adding to the confusion. Cities won't just need physical infrastructure to prepare for these growing mobility options, but the...
Vacant storefronts have become pervasive on our city streets. How did we get here? And how can we help retailers, and community spaces, thrive? In this episode, we explore innovations that could help address the retail crisis — and embed flexibility...
We're in a housing crisis. Could affordability by design be part of the solution? In this episode hosts Eric Jaffe and Vanessa Quirk look at trends in housing — from unit design to co-living — and ask how the private sector...
Today, Sidewalk Labs’ proposal for Toronto, the Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP), will be released to the public. And because a lot of the innovations in the MIDP are episode topics that we’ll be exploring in Season 2, we...
For our first live show, co-host Vanessa Quirk moderates a discussion with some of the familiar voices from season 1: Director of Buildings Innovation Karim Khalifa; Director of Mobility for Streets Willa Ng; and Associate Director of Sustainability Emily Kildow....
Simple as it may seem, recycling properly is really hard — and our misguided attempts are actually harming the planet more than helping. But what if we could know, instantly, if we're recycling correctly? What if we were "nudged" to...
Every day, truck drivers are out battling rush hour traffic, maneuvering through narrow city streets, circling for parking, emitting exhaust — all to get you your package as fast as possible. For the sake of our cities, and our planet,...
Traffic lights were invented to improve pedestrian safety, but they also created streets that put cars first. But what if traffic lights could respond to the actual conditions at the intersection — perhaps stay red for an elderly walker or...
In our second episode, we explore how modular pavement — which would allow us to embed technologies into our streets — could transform our cities. We talk to Tim Allen, co-founder of a start-up working to make pavement warm up...
In our first episode of City of the Future, our new bi-weekly podcast, we explore how mass timber could transform our cities — by making wooden skyscrapers possible. We talk to the world’s leading expert on tall wooden buildings,...
City of the Future is a podcast from Sidewalk Labs — coming soon!