Alphabet Inc is planning to build its own digital city

Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., aims at improving cities worldwide, by conducting studies on how technology impacts city living, and what changes it should go through, to improve the quality of life in cities across the world.

In its exploration of design and planning ideas, named Project Sidewalk, Alphabet Inc has started looking for ways to test concepts and ideas in actual streets and urban environments, rather than relying on simulations.

The project will be more than a simple simulated stage, along the lines of the 1976 movie “Future World”, with plans to build an actual pilot district where self-driving cars, Wireless communication, and new, experimental forms of public transportation, as well as new forms of housing, can be tested and implemented in real life.

At present, Alphabet Inc. is looking at two options to start this project: either buy land and build a district from scratch, or let existing communities place bids, to host the experimental district.

Should Alphabet Inc. opt for the purchase of empty land, Project Sidewalk is expected to generate housing for hundreds of thousands of people. Sidewalk Labs, the team behind Project Sidewalk is working on a proposal to present to Larry Page, detailing what will happen once the grand works begin, and everything that will happen thereafter.

Sidewalk Labs’s project is ambitious, however the effort is visible, as the team recently acquired the company that is currently working on turning every single payphone in New York City, into a Wi-Fi hub, providing free Wi-Fi access.

The success of Google’s self driving vehicles has plenty to do with the scope of the project, which aims at testing technologies that it would be simply too laborious and complicated to test in existing neighborhoods, aside from the cost, and impact of converting neighborhoods into high-tech districts.