Public-Private Neighborhoods.

Over the las decade, we have seen how the private firms have taken public matters into their own hands, Uber by solving the transportation issues in cities, Airbnb supplying reasonably affordable housing and the Brightline in Florida connecting cities through its own privately owned train system. Lately a new company has been popping on the news, its Sidewalk Labs and its Alphabets (Googles father company) response to neighborhood development. The idea is to contribute to the development of neighborhoods in major cities like NYC, San Francisco and Toronto thus helping cities become ¨future proof¨ while maintaining an identity apart from their governments.

Sidewalk will be developing a neighborhood in Toronto’s waterfront claiming it will address all of the problems a regular neighborhood faces making it an urban lab for this kind of development and testing new strategies that will later be implemented in other major cities to improve their performance. Sidewalk Labs shows exactly how traditional real estate firms usually in only for the returns could better cities and benefit their habitants while creating healthier markets to keep investing in.

Watch the following video to learn more about Sidewalk Labs and its Toronto project.