City clicker: Dan Doctoroff on the creation of digital cities

Following the announcement last week that Sidewalk Labs will be abandoning its plans to build a “city from the internet up” in Toronto, we take a look back at the original vision. Chief executive Dan Doctoroff told Emily Wright what Google’s urban innovation arm had planned for the site and explained why the ambitions were worth the challenges… Dan Doctoroff’s plans to build cities “from the internet up” have made him one of the biggest names in urban innovation. The founder of Sidewalk Labs talks about digital districts and his journey from deputy mayor to global tech titan. When it comes to building a city from the internet up, there are no quick fixes. There are no shortcuts to be taken, no straightforward decisions to be made and no well-trodden paths to be followed.  Just ask Dan Doctoroff – the man who has made it his mission to deliver the world’s next generation of digital districts. “I don’t think I fully appreciated what I was getting myself into,” says the founder and chief executive of Sidewalk Labs, the urban innovation arm of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. “This is by far the most complicated thing I have ever done.” The ‘this’ in question is his ambitious plan to create a blueprint for cities of the future, starting with an 800-acre test site in Toronto, Canada. And Doctoroff has no qualms in conceding that he could never have predicted the magnitude of the task in hand when he first approached Google with his idea in 2015. Quite the admission coming from a man who was previously the chief executive and president of Bloomberg and New York’s deputy mayor for economic development. During his first term in the latter role he oversaw 289 separate projects and initiatives, including the rezoning of 6,000 city blocks, the creation of 130m sq ft of residential and commercial space, and 2,400 acres of new parks including the High Line, Brooklyn Bridge Park and Governors Island. But none of that comes close to the complex nature of what he is trying to achieve in his current role. “I look out of my office window onto the Hudson Yards development, which is a scheme I spearheaded during my time in government,” he says. “It is becoming America’s largest-ever development project, but what I am doing now is way more complicated.” Why? Many reasons, says Doctoroff, and one in particular. “It is never easy to explain the future.” Ironic given the fact that this is what he is now asked to do on an almost daily basis. “We don’t have all the answers to the future,” he says. “We’re not saying that we have all the answers. What we’re proposing is to create a flexible framework with enough detail and early actions for others to use. We see ourselves in many ways as a catalyst for the creation of the first 21st-century district.” As plans for this district ramp up in Toronto this year, Doctoroff explains what building a city “from the internet up” actually means, addresses concerns over privacy and insists that fears of traditional real estate companies being replaced by firms like his are totally unfounded.  [caption id="attachment_963308" align="aligncenter" width="847"] The Eastern Waterfront area of the Sidewalk Toronto scheme[/caption] On the radar High-profile, complex roles at equally high-profile organisations have dominated much of Doctoroff’s career. But he has never been more visible, certainly outside New York, than he is now following the announcement in October 2017 that Sidewalk Labs planned to develop Sidewalk Toronto. The combination of Google’s involvement, the fact there was a plot in mind and nearly secured and Doctoroff himself – a known entity with a reputation as a big hitter in business, real estate and government – saw news of the scheme dominate headlines around the world.  With the headlines came the questions. How will this work in practice? How will the data element impact us? How will the concept be rolled out beyond one site in Toronto? The first thing Doctoroff has to say in response to those questions collectively is simple, succinct and honest: “It is not easy.” But difficult does not mean impossible. “Every bit of work and research we have done so far has convinced us that building cities in this way is absolutely doable. We wouldn’t be making this investment and spending critical parts of our careers focusing on this if we didn’t believe it was possible.” He points out too that the concept of creating digital cities in reality is unlikely to be as technologically mind-boggling as many might think. “These districts are going to be both familiar and different. But the ultimate principles that make cities great won’t change. Cities are for people, and if we improve the experience for the people, we improve the city. Those principles are timeless.” This may be the case, but the fact remains that there are major elements of what Sidewalk Labs is proposing that are unfamiliar. And where there is change, fear is not far behind. Into the unknown Concerns over privacy have already been raised in relation to the Toronto scheme specifically and the concept of ‘Google cities’ in general. Does Doctoroff see this as a spanner in the Sidewalk works?  “Some of the data element has been a big focus of attention on this project [Sidewalk Toronto], but that misses the point,” he says. “It was never actually about technology. Technology is just a means to help lower the cost of living, to improve health outcomes and the environment, and to enhance safety. The question is: how can we use the tools that are now available to us to improve quality of life? All we are trying to do is enhance what makes cities great and eliminate the things, like congestion and pollution, which make them not so great. “If you look at what we are actually proposing, most of it has nothing to do with data and sensors. For example, on the first phase of this project we are suggesting that the vast majority of new buildings are made of wood. They would be built using mass timber – a relatively new kind of technology that has huge environmental benefits and lowers the cost of buildings to enable us to produce more affordable housing. “To some extent, the ability to create greater efficiencies uses information and new data-driven technologies. But for the most part, what we are doing is laminating wood in a different way and adding a factory to produce it. You would not call that ‘building a city from the internet up’. That’s just using new technology, or in some cases innovating old technology, to create radically new results. “However, we do take the question of data and privacy incredibly seriously. While we don’t think of this place as being driven by sensors and data, we do think that they can add extraordinary value in terms of achieving quality-of-life objectives. But they have to be managed carefully.  “A few months ago, we proposed an urban data policy that we think is a huge leap forward in terms of the way data collected in public or semi-public spaces can be managed. We believe that we should be subjected, like everybody else, to the same set of rules and be governed by an independent civic data trust. We know that we are going to have to find ways of managing data in the future to ensure that everyone feels comfortable with the ways it is actually used.” Public engagement In terms of the wider public reaction, Doctoroff is upbeat despite the concerns over privacy. “Given the massive volume of information and the newness of it all, we have been pleasantly surprised by the reaction. The question is whether we can get good enough at communicating to give people a sense of what it is we are planning. “Our statistics show that in the past year we have engaged with nearly 20,000 people. I can’t think of a project that has had that much public engagement. And if we take the feedback we get and reflect it properly into our plans then I am optimistic that we can be successful.” As for industry reaction, and real estate in particular, the response has been more complex. Fears that the role of traditional developers could be made redundant by the emergence of companies like Sidewalk Labs have been rife since plans for the Toronto scheme were announced. But Doctoroff insists the opposite is true. “Our expectation is actually not to be the physical developer of the vast majority of the digital districts themselves,” he says. “The role we want to play is that of a catalyst. We want to demonstrate to the private market how innovation makes financial and business sense. And to prove that these innovations can be deployed. That will only be successful if we set the stage for innovation.” Comprehensive plan Aside from managing reaction, there are other big hurdles for Doctoroff and his team to overcome – like planning. “We are in the last couple of months of putting together the master innovation and development plan for Toronto, and this will be a comprehensive plan of how we are going to build this place. “We will then go through a process of approval, which will have to be gained at three levels of government and our main partner, Waterfront Toronto. We expect that to take up most of the year so we are in a position to start construction in the latter part of 2020, but there are a lot of hurdles to jump over first. “The approvals are going to be a really interesting mix of land use approvals required in order to achieve some of the innovation approaches. In short, we are going to be working really hard with our government partners this year to make the project a reality.” This is where the issue of timing comes in – another big challenge. “To do these big, complicated projects you have to master the art of operating at two speeds at the same time,” says Doctoroff. “You have to be incredibly patient and respectful because the process matters a lot, but at the same time you have to act with a sense of urgency because if you don’t then the project will die. “This balance will be absolutely critical in Toronto, and at Sidewalk Labs we need to have people on board who can be both patient and urgent. It is really difficult to find those people, especially when you’re bringing together a set of disciplines where the norm is not always to act that way. “We need people who can cross what we call the urbanist/technologist divide. There is a reason the smart city movement hasn’t been very successful in the past and it is, in part, because technologists don’t understand cities and urbanists typically don’t understand technology. We have had to work very hard to bring a team together that understands both.” Finally, the burning question: can the blueprint for a digital district be rolled out across the globe? “If we succeed on Toronto then obviously there will be opportunities to do things in other places,” says Doctoroff. “Cities really like to copy other cities. So I think people will look to us for inspiration and use us as a model. Maybe not for the whole thing, but for pieces of it. “That would be fantastic, because part of the reason we want to do this is to set an example for the rest of the world.” How Sidewalk Labs came about “When Mike Bloomberg came back to Bloomberg after he finished being mayor of New York, I decided I didn’t want to go back and be his deputy on a de facto basis again,” says Doctoroff. “So at 56 years old I decided it was time to do something more on my own. “I had been thinking a lot about combining technology and cities. I knew that Larry Page, the chief executive of Google and now Alphabet, had been thinking the same thing for a long time. We got together, and soon afterwards I got an out-of-the-blue email from [executive director of Google, now Alphabet] Eric Schmidt that simply said ‘city of the future?’ “We spent several months talking about different hypotheses and what this ‘place’ might be, and where. And what was actually possible. This all led to the decision to create Sidewalk Labs in the summer of 2015.” Sidewalk Toronto: the objectives Establish a complete community that improves quality of life for a diverse population of residents, workers and visitors Create a destination for people, companies, start-ups, and local organisations to advance solutions to the challenges facing cities, such as energy use, housing affordability and transportation Make Toronto the global hub of a rising new industry: urban innovation Serve as a model for sustainable neighbourhoods throughout Toronto and cities around the world. To send feedback, e-mail emily.wright@egi.co.uk or tweet @EmilyW_9 or @estatesgazette Photos: Portraits by Salem Krieger