Announcement burnishes Canadian city?s reputation as growing tech hub Sidewalk Labs, the urban innovation unit of Alphabet, Google?s parent company, announced during a press conference this afternoon that it will be working to develop a new high-tech urban district on Toronto?s waterfront, planting a flag in Canada?s largest city, a move that?s been expected for weeks.
The new 800-acre district on the shores of Lake Ontario, Waterfront Toronto, a massive new development in the Quayside neighborhood, was envisioned with the aim of ?mixing people-centered urban design with cutting-edge technology.?
Sidewalk Labs will serve as the development?s innovation partner. The company announced a $50 million investment in testing smart city technology today, making it the largest Google-related smart city project in the world, while Google announced it will move its Canadian headquarters to this neighborhood Waterfront Toronto has been imagined as a new neighborhood that will be"climate positive"?emissions will be net zero?with 20 per cent of new housing designated as affordable.

BREAKING: Sidewalk + @WaterfrontTO announce @SidewalkToronto, a partnership to create a new district on Toronto?s Eastern Waterfront pic.twitter.com/OqOLXyqGbt? Sidewalk Labs (@sidewalklabs) October 17, 2017

In a press conference at the Toronto waterfront, Justin Trudeau and the Ontario Prime Minister Kathleen Wynne, as well as Dan Doctoroff, the head of Sidewalk Labs, discussed the dis...