Last June Google launched its Sidewalk Labs project to explore smart city technologies. At a conference this week the scheme’s director, Dan Doctoroff, hinted they may be looking at building an entire digitially connected town from scratch.
Planned cities don’t have a good track record, as Disney discovered in Florida with their community named Celebration, so the odds are against Google from the start in this.
Google adds to the challenge with some distrust towards the company following the shutting down of the Revolv device — even the slightest risk of a service or device being shutdown or discontinued is enough to dissuade even the most eager smartcity enthusiasts.
Making Google’s task of successfully rolling out smartcity products, let alone build a smartcity from scratch, is the company’s notorious attention deficit disorder where management struggle to maintain focus on products or projects.
For anyone thinking of living in a smartcity, the commitment of developers, vendors and authorities towards the technologies is an essential consideration. It’s also why open source software and standards are essential when building a community around technology.