To those saying "a big company shaping cities is bad" - take a hard look at how American cities are shaped now and the big companies who influenced the relevant policies. You're going to find oil, car, tire, etc companies at the forefront.
The urban rail systems of 100 years ago were ripped out of the streets and replaced with bus-lines and consumer automobiles after considerable lobbying effort from auto-manufacturers. Public rail infrastructure has never really bounced back.
When the interstate highway system was designed and built, it bulldozed through dozens, if not hundreds, of lower income / minority neighborhoods. The public housing projects constructed as a replacement became problematic straight away. Guess which large companies at the forefront of the push for an interstate highway system?
Point is American cities have been shaped by these corporate forces for along time. In many of those cases, perhaps most, their influence and actions have hurt the community, disbanded or destroyed neighborhoods, made transportation more expensive and nightmarish (traffic), and benefited the bottom lines of 3rd party interest groups / corporations.
That is why we are skeptical of Google, or any other for profit large institution, influencing urban planning. Far better to set standards of urban design and have multiple smaller institutions, some for profit, some not for profit, some collectivized to represent of organized neighborhoods, all develop and participate in a dynamic urban planning system.
To me, the lessons of 20th century American urban policy are more about the dangers in embracing the wrong technology (automobiles as the solution to all transportation problems) and rebuilding cities to serve that, as opposed to a simplistic story about private interests destroying down public goods.
It's not really an issue of company, but industry. Cities that are single-industry are fragile.
A lot of corporations moved out of cities and into small municipalities / smaller states in the second half of the 20th century. They were given the gold-star treatment with tax breaks, infrastructure projects to support their corporate campuses, etc. I know a town in New Jersey where Lokheed Martin employs probably more than half of the home owners in the town. Who do you think runs that town?
http://www.businessinsider.com/this-map-explains-the-f-35-fi...
That's not something special about the F-35, except maybe in execution details; the strategy has been well-known and frequently practiced by many defense contractors (and commented on by critics of defense procurement) for many years before the F-35 project.
Lots of cars = big stores = possibility for suburbs.
Exxon did not say to the President: 'build suburbs because it's good for cars'.
I believe Google has considerably more goodwill - at the same time...
We've known for 100's of years how to build good cities
Cities are about people, culture and architecture - not 'wifi' and 'hyper-loops'.
Many North American cities are trying to get people to bicycle - yeah - that's retrograde ! and good. We don't need tech for that.
Utopian thinking usually ends up in dystopia because of the arrogance of the 'visionaries' - they over emphasize some things, and fail to recognize the underlying, important things.
I can't think of a single 'modern' city, truly designed in the modern era that is a glowing example of 'how it should be'.
All the great places to live are old - built before cars, interesting architecture, and some kind of local culture with nice people, low crime, fresh air. That's mostly what you need.
Want a hyperloop? Sure. Put it underground where nobody can see it, and it serves it's function: getting people from A->B.
When there are no bike lanes it's a problem.
Yes he did. A few examples of what oil/car folks did: dismantle public transit, make sure negative externalities of cars are not directly paid, lobby congress to pay for 90% of highways and make transit funding less/harder to get, get into wars for oil, take over planning departments at highly regarded colleges and change curriculum to churn out car focused planners.
Creating the interstate systems did kill trains but also greatly influenced where cities and economies sprang up. It also made the US a car culture and locked it in, which worked great for big areas of undeveloped land at the time, and allowed people to move around more freely.
I'd love a president or government in the US to do the same and make an electric car interstate system, basically just giving it to companies like Tesla or others with conditions. Basically start adding electric car charging stations and add an iteration to the interstates, make them self-driving capable and more.
Or a president or government policy to get gigabit broadband across the nation as a new baseline of digital transportation of data that will open up unforseen new products and markets.
TTC is killed by the unions.
The Toronto Subway has changed collectors - 7 of whom, in 2016 earned more than $100K.
I'm not making a political statement - just indicating that public transit in Toronto can't move without the unions - and unless you want to pay through the teeth - and keep jobs around where they don't need to be ... no future.
In Frankfurt, most stations have no staff, it's mostly the 'honour system'.
There are some 'token machines' in Toronto but it's archaic in 2017 to be paying people to 'make change'.
I'm fine with 'employing them' but surely there is something more productive they could do.
If it takes Google scanning my Google ID and filling out a CAPTCHA to get on the subway to achieve this then so be it, the current system embarrasses me when I have foreign friends visit.
Some systems are so backwards they will never be fixed, they will be disrupted. But don't discount the power of unions.
You could have, in Google Village Toronto - literally the coolest and most advanced transit system in the world - and the TTC Change Collectors could still be there.
It takes a mayor or Premier who is basically willing to burn a ton of political capital to take them on - and it never happens.
Current Premier Wynne is bribing the unions for votes.
It's a problem with populism - and one of the ugly/secret reasons that public transit is not expanded in more places: bureaucracy, complexity, unions, cabals, systems-in-place.
I don't like Google, but yes, let's hope they can disrupt public transit.
I wish this idea would die. They are an ad company. They want to stuff themselves into every facet of your life and milk you for information.
Now, watching it all actually unfold, I'm starting to wonder if I'm crazy.
A modern example of the latter is visible in the municipalities clamouring to accommodate Amazon. Time will tell if that one ends in another broken city.