Good Code is a weekly podcast about ethics in our digital world. We look at ways in which our increasingly digital societies could go terribly wrong, and speak with those trying to prevent that. Each week, host Chine Labbé engages with a different expert on the ethical dilemmas raised by our ever-more pervasive digital technologies. Good Code is a dynamic collaboration between the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech and journalist Chine Labbé.
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On this episode:
From small projects within existing cities, to entire neighborhoods built from the Internet up, our urban lives are getting smarter. Smart cities are attractive: to us, but also to global capital. Should we be skeptical, and resist the smart city movement?
We ask Ellen Goodman about the texture of life in the smart city of the future, and whether or not serendipity will be a thing of the past.
She tells us why she fears smart cities could lead to a loss of democratic accountability, and a concentration of power. And she warns that we should be vigilant about the theory of the “good” that is driving our urban innovations.
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We talked about:
- In this episode, we talk about the ways in which big tech companies are bringing back the old idea of “company towns”. Facebook is a good example. It’s planning to invest in a “mixed-use neighborhood” in Menlo Park, California. The project was quickly dubbed “Zucktown” by the press, in reference to the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Read about it in The New York Times, and read Facebook’s latest press release.
- Goodman mentions one of the first company towns ever envisioned in the US, which never panned out: Walt Disney’s EPCOT: the “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.” Read about it here.
- Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also seems to have a smart city project of his own. In 2017, an investment firm of his invested in a piece of land in the Arizona desert. The local real estate group leading the project initially described it as a “forward-thinking community,” embracing “cutting-edge technology.”
- Ellen Goodman also mentions Songdo, a smart city built in South Korea which didn’t attract as many people as expected. One thing people complained about: its lack of human interaction.
- Our guest talks about the RFP for Sidewalk Toronto. What’s an RFP? It’s a request for proposal. Here is the one we talk about in this episode.
- The Atlantic described this project as “Google’s guinea pig” (Sidewalk Labs, which is leading the project, is a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company).
- In this episode, Ellen Goodman also talks about Google’s experiment with fiber. It was deployed in cities like Kansas City and Louisville. But it didn’t prove a thriving business, and Google has since paused its development.
- We explore Sidewalk Toronto, and talk about the ups and downs the project has had to face already. It hasn’t gone all smoothly. In October 2018, Ann Cavoukian, a privacy expert hired as a consultant on the project, resigned over privacy concerns. “I imagined us creating a Smart City of Privacy, as opposed to a Smart City of Surveillance,” she wrote in her resignation letter.
- One interesting proposal of the project, on the privacy front, has been this idea of a “data trust”, Goodman says. But critics are not pleased with Google “framing the conversation”, as Bianca Wylie, one of the most vocal critics of the project, told Motherboard.
Read more:
- Part of the smart city movement tries to find ways to develop cities that would better respect our environment than our current ones do. The Swedish government wants to revive night trains, precisely for that reason.
- The We Company (the one behind WeWork offices) is launching a smart city initiative to address climate change.
- Thousands of San Diego street lights are equipped with sensors and cameras. Read about it here.
- Want a sneak peek into Sidewalk Toronto’s design? Here are 6 “crazy details.” The latest feature presented is a raincoat for buildings, that would enable people to sit outside all year long.
- Bianca Wylie is one of the most prominent critics of Sidewalk Toronto. This is her website.
