Reimagining cities from the Internet up

[Commentary] It’s been a little more than a year since Alphabet (then Google) and I launched Sidewalk Labs. Larry Page and I shared a view that a combination of digital technologies — ubiquitous connectivity, social networks, sensing, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and new design and fabrication technologies — would help bring about a revolution in urban life. Their impact will be as profound as the steam engine, the electric grid, and the automobile, the three previous technological revolutions that have largely defined the modern city.

We started by conducting a detailed thought experiment: What would a city look like if you started from scratch in the Internet era — if you built a city “from the Internet up?”

[Daniel Doctoroff is the CEO of Sidewalk Labs, a startup company focused on developing technology focused on city life]