Google, ex-Bloomberg CEO Hope 'Sidewalk Labs' Project Will Transform Cities

Google's latest side project is Sidewalk Labs, a company dedicated to transforming cities from dusty crowded slabs of gray into a place future generations will be pleased to call home.

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Cities are crowded, polluted, noisy and dangerous, and they’re where a booming percentage of Americans live and work. But Google CEO Larry Page says it doesn’t have to stay that way.

Page announced June 10 a new company called Sidewalk Labs, which is dedicated to improving urban life by doing things like making commutes shorter, making the landscapes lusher and making bicycle travel safer.

Page noted in a post on Google Plus that while investment in the project is relatively modest for Google, the project has the potential to improve people’s lives in an area outside the tech giant’s core business model, similar to projects like Google[x], the firm’s moonshot arm, and Calico, the research and biotech lab founded in 2013. Sidewalk Labs is to be led by Dan Doctoroff, former CEO of Bloomberg and deputy mayor of economic development and rebuilding for the city of New York.

“We are at the beginning of a historic transformation in cities,” Doctoroff stated in a press release. “At a time when the concerns about urban equity, costs, health and the environment are intensifying, unprecedented technological change is going to enable cities to be more efficient, responsive, flexible and resilient. We hope that Sidewalk will play a major role in developing technology products, platforms and advanced infrastructure that can be implemented at scale in cities around the world.”

The United Nations predicts the number of people living in cities will double by 2050, with 3.5 billion already living in urban regions today.

More information about Sidewalk Labs can be found on the official website at sidewalkinc.com.

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