Jane Jacobs Archives - Womens Post

Back in October it was announced that Google’s sister company, Sidewalk Labs, in collaboration with Waterfront Toronto and the Canadian federal government, was chosen as a partner to create an innovative city hub in Toronto, coined Quayside.

Sidewalk Labs will be helping develop “a new kind of mixed-use, complete community” on 12-acres of unused Waterfront property. The aim is to use new technology and sustainable practices to address urban problems. They claim this new “smart” will help improve economic growth and bring international attention to Toronto.

Dan Doctoroff, Chairman and CEO of Sidewalk Labs, answered questions from the public about the project on Reddit. A lot is still unknown, but here were some of the big, and quirky, questions**:

Question: What is the timeline for this project, when do you hope to break ground, and are there plans to have mix use housing?

Answer: Great questions. The only timeline right now is the year-long community planning process that we launched with the Town Hall on November 1. We’ll be releasing the formal engagement plan in early 2018. At the end of this process, Sidewalk Labs, Waterfront Toronto, and the local community will determine whether we should proceed.

As for mixed-income housing — I answered that above but it’s worth repeating. We are strongly committed to making Sidewalk Toronto affordable and accessible to people with a range of incomes, ages, and abilities. We also believe strongly (this is in our RFP response) that mixed-income housing should exist within buildings.

What can you and your company do to ensure that there will be housing available for all kinds of families from various income brackets?

Right from the very beginning of this project, we and Alphabet have committed to making Sidewalk Toronto representative of the socioeconomic characteristics of the greater Toronto area. As a result, we think one of the great opportunities is to figure out ways to make housing more affordable to far more people than is typically done in new developments.

We’re looking at new types of buildings that can reduce construction costs; new approaches to making buildings more adaptable, which can lower cost; and innovative financing programs to make housing more affordable. I was very proud in New York to have led the development of a housing plan that created or preserved 165,000 units of subsidized housing over an 11-year period of time and would hope we can adapt some of those approaches to Sidewalk Toronto.

I was wondering if you can comment on what it is about Toronto that is unique or unprecedented when it comes to urban planning?

We have studied the idea of building a neighbourhood of the future since I formed Sidewalk Labs, in partnership with Larry Page, in 2015. Since then we’ve looked all over the world for the perfect place to bring that vision to life — and we found it in Toronto. Toronto is unique in its incredible diversity and openness, its rich legacy of urbanism, and its rising tech sector. It’s also suffering the problems facing many growing cities around the world, such as affordability and sustainability, which makes it the perfect place to explore new ideas to improve urban life. We did a tremendous amount of research on Toronto while preparing our vision response to Waterfront Toronto’s RFP — and we look forward to getting to know the city even better this year.

With the challenges that Toronto faces to transit and moving people across its sprawling “downtown” – coupled with Quayside’s somewhat remote location – how do you see Quayside attracting people from outside of the bubble to come visit/work/play?

A second core assumption that we made right from the beginning is that this would never be a bubble! It should be fully integrated into the fabric of the metropolitan area. We’ve done a lot of work thinking about the ways that this site — which sits on the water, separated by the Gardiner from the rest of downtown — can be stitched together into Toronto’s existing neighbourhoods. That includes potential expansions of mass transit, new forms of shuttles (over time potentially using self-driving technology), heated bike and pedestrian paths, and other ideas. We also believe some of the approaches we pilot here, including using technology to manage flows of pedestrians, cyclists, transit vehicles, as well as cars, can be applied more broadly in other Toronto areas.

I would love to see some of this area opened up to a low-tech thing – fishing. Are there any plans to include a fishing node or assess areas for fishing the new harbourfront areas?

Having spent a day last week fishing and having caught nothing, that’s a sore subject right now! I think Fishing as a Service would be a great thing to include in Quayside. (Promise I’m joking.)

Your point is really about waterfront access for the local community, which is a great one. Many Torontonians feel disconnected from the water by the Gardiner Expressway. One of our goals is to support the city’s plans to stitch together the waterfront with downtown neighborhoods, and we’ll be exploring many potential ways to improve access via transit or other means (I mentioned some of them in another answer). We’re also big fans of the recently launched Bentway project (Waterfront Toronto is a project partner) to create a lively public realm beneath the Gardiner and help draw people down toward the waterfront — to fish or otherwise.

What is the first structure you plan on building?

A statue of Jane Jacobs? The real answer is we don’t know yet. What would YOU like to see us build first?

How can I have a job with you?

That is the question I get most often! The truth is, we can’t achieve our goals with Sidewalk Toronto unless we create an organization that combines skills that no single company has ever had. We are looking for people with experience in government, product and engineering, real estate development, business development and investment, communications — and others. The Sidewalk Labs website will give you a sense of what types of jobs are available right now (several are potentially based in Toronto). We also have a way for people to submit their resumes to our “talent network” so that if a job opens up we can see if there are any qualified applicants already in the system. Here is that link — you should apply! https://boards.greenhouse.io/sidewalklabs/jobs/594339#.WlYuYbQ-dE4

Some members of the civic policy community are concerned that giving a private agency greater control over municipal space will result in reduced public ownership and oversight of regions of the city. How will Sidewalk Labs ensure that its activities are transparent, accountable, and that its outcomes serve the people of Toronto – as opposed to financial interests of Alphabet/Google?

Answer: The short answer is we don’t see this as a private entity controlling this. We see this as a robust partnership with the public sector. Many of the staff members of Sidewalk Labs (including myself!) have spent much of their careers working in local government, and we believe strongly in its power to improve the lives of people in cities.

We also believe strongly in transparency, which is why we’ve been releasing documents at the Sidewalk Toronto site as often as possible, as does our partner, Waterfront Toronto, which will be taking the lead on making records of open meetings publicly accessible. (Waterfront Toronto also has an Open Meetings Processes that applies to board meetings and board committee meetings.)

**Questions shortened for space. Full Reddit Q&A can be found here.

Margaret Zeidler is one of the biggest Jane Jacobs fans you will meet. In fact, she attributes much of her success and innovation to the urbanist’s theories.

While Zeidler has studied much of Jacobs’ work, it was two sentences in the chapter “The Need for Aged Buildings” of The Death and Life of Great American Cities that inspired the creation of a company called Urbanspace and 401 Richmond, an urban community for artists and entrepreneurs.

“Old ideas can use new buildings, but new ideas need old buildings,” she said. “It was a waking up for me – you can’t solve everything with architecture and maybe you shouldn’t try to do that. These things that seem like they need to be fixed or torn down actually have a purpose in the economy to the city. That’s what 401 Richmond is all about”

Zeidler found and bought the industrial building complex in 1994 at a time when property prices were at an all time low. In 18 months, Zeidler led a team that transformed the warehouse into a vibrant workplace that housed a number of tenants with art and culture backgrounds, most hoping to kick start their careers in Toronto. The buildings have since been designated a heritage site.

401 Richmond now houses 140 tenants, all artists, entrepreneurs, or heads of social enterprises that are using spaces to launch their non-profits or startups. There are 12 galleries showcasing art of all kinds, a dance school, a roof garden, and Studio 123, an early learning centre. Each aspect of 401 Richmond works together to create a sustainable community and inspire ideas.

401 Richmond also has what’s called a career launcher studio, which is given to a graduating art student for a year to start their practice. All of these things together create a diverse community where artists and dreamers could thrive.

“I love it. It’s gorgeous,” Zeidler said of 401 Richmond. “It has almost 1000 windows in it – wood and metal, beautiful old fashioned windows. We are constantly doing renovations or adding new tenants that we think will be interesting. It’s a wonderful place to be and work. You run into all kinds of fabulous people.”

Zeidler expanded the idea through UrbanSpace by purchasing a new warehouse further down Spadina to be used as a co-working space for non-profits and startups. This led to a co-founded space called the Centre for Social Innovation, a shared workspace for over 170 nonprofits, social enterprises, activists, and artists.

“We talked to a bunch of young people working out of their basement,” Zeidler said. “They wanted to be in a community and talk to people and work physically in a space with people doing similar work.”

These urban communities, specifically 401 Richmond, is currently facing it’s own set of troubles. The space was hit with a property assessment that doubled the buildings’ tax bill. These same taxes are set to jump by another 21 per cent, making it difficult for Urban Space to continue and provide below-average rent costs for tenants — a staple of the entire 401 Richmond concept.

The issue is still being worked out, with the City of Toronto actively pushing for an exemption using a provision classified as “community benefit.”

“There are reasons why it’s useful to have inexpensive and mixed space within a core, especially when it’s rapidly gentrifying,” Zeidler said. “It’s about invention and new ideas.”

Zeidler will not be deterred. She spends as much of her free time at 401 Richmond as she can and remains active in the management of the community. “People are said to feel welcome. Diverse and happy place. We spend a ton of our lives working and it would be so nice to work on something you love but also in an environment you love.”

Zeidler is currently reading Becoming Jane Jacobs by Peter L. Laurence.

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Jane Jacobs

CEO Sidewalk Labs answers Toronto’s questions

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