MTI外刊阅读精选人行道实验室Sidewalk LabsQUAYSIDE, an area of flood-prone land stretching for 12 acres (4.8 hectares) on Torontos eastern waterfront, is home to a vast, pothole-filled parking lot, low-slung buildings and huge soyabean silosa crumbling vestige of the areas bygone days as an industrial port. Many consider it an eyesore but for Sidewalk Labs, an “urban innovation” subsidiary of Googles parent company, Alphabet, it is an ideal location for the worlds “first neighbourhood built from the internet up”.码头区(Quayside)位于多伦多东部水滨，是一片绵延 12英亩(4.8 公顷)的易涝地带，这里有一个遍地坑洼的宽阔停车场、若干低矮的建筑物和巨大的大豆筒仓从这片破败的景观中可以窥见这里作为工业港口的过往。许多人认为此地有碍观瞻，但对于谷歌母公司 Alphabet旗下从事“城市创新”的子公司人行道实验室(Sidewalk Labs)来说，这里是兴建世界“首个建于互联网之上的街区”的理想之地。Sidewalk Labs is working in partnership with Waterfront Toronto, an agency representing the federal, provincial and municipal governments that is responsible for developing the area, on a $50m project to overhaul Quayside. It aims to make it a “platform” for testing how emerging technologies might ameliorate urban problems such as pollution, traffic jams and a lack of affordable housing. Its innovations could be rolled out across an 800-acre expanse of the waterfrontan area as large as Venice.人行道实验室正与代表联邦、省和市政府负责开发这一地区的多伦多滨水公司(Waterfront Toronto)合作，实施一个耗资 5000万美元的项目对码头区进行大改造。目标是把该地区打造成一个“平台”，用于测试新兴技术能如何缓解污染、交通堵塞和廉价住房稀缺等城市问题。创新成果可以被推广至占地 800英亩的大片滨水地区和威尼斯差不多大。First, however, Sidewalk Labs is planning pilot projects across Toronto this summer to test some of the technologies it hopes to employ at Quayside; this is partly to reassure residents. If its detailed plan is approved later this year (by Waterfront Toronto and also by various city authorities), it could start work at Quayside in 2020.不过，人行道实验室计划首先于今夏在多伦多各地开展项目试点，以测试它希望在码头区部署的一些技术。这样做一定程度上是为了让居民对项目放心。如果其详细计划在今年晚些时候能得到多伦多滨水公司及各个政府部门的批准，它可于2020年在码头区动工。That proposal contains ideas ranging from the familiar to the revolutionary. There will be robots delivering packages and hauling away rubbish via underground tunnels; a thermal energy grid that does not rely on fossil fuels; modular buildings that can shift from residential to retail use; adaptive traffic lights; and snow-melting sidewalks. Private cars are banned; a fleet of self-driving shuttles and robotaxis would roam freely. Googles Canadian headquarters would relocate there.相关方案既包含常见的设计，也有革命性的创意。那里将有：通过地下隧道递送包裹和清运垃圾的机器人;一个不依赖化石燃料的热电网;可把住宅变成零售店面的模块化建筑;自适应的交通信号灯;能自行融化积雪的人行道。私家车将被禁行，无人驾驶班车和机器人出租车队会在路上自由穿行。谷歌的加拿大总部将迁到那里。Undergirding Quayside would be a “digital layer” with sensors tracking, monitoring and capturing everything from how park benches are used to levels of noise to water use by lavatories. Sidewalk Labs says that collecting, aggregating and analysing such volumes of data will make Quayside efficient, liveable and sustainable. Data would also be fed into a public platform through which residents could, for example, allow maintenance staff into their homes while they are at work.支撑码头区的将是一个“数字层”，用传感器跟踪、监测和捕捉所有事物，从公园长椅的使用情况，到噪音水平，再到厕所的用水量。人行道实验室表示，收集、汇总和分析如此庞大的数据将使码头区变得高效、宜居和可持续。数据也将被输入到一个公共平台上供居民使用，比如他们可以在上班时让维修人员进家门。Similar “smart city” projects, such as Masdar in the United Arab Emirates or South Koreas Songdo, have spawned lots of hype but are not seen as big successes. Many experience delays because of shifting political and financial winds, or because those overseeing their construction fail to engage locals in the design of communities, says Deland Chan, an expert on smart cities at Stanford University. Dan Doctoroff, the head of Sidewalk Labs, who was deputy to Michael Bloomberg when the latter was mayor of New York City, says that most projects flop because they fail to cross what he terms “the urbanist-technologist divide”.阿联酋的马斯达城(Masdar)和韩国的松岛新城(Songdo)等类似的“智慧城市”项目都引发过热议，却未被视为巨大的成功。斯坦福大学的智慧城市专家陈逸坚表示，由于政治和金融风向的改变，或因为工程负责人未能让当地居民参与到社区的设计中，许多项目都有拖延的情况。人行道实验室的负责人丹·多克托洛夫(Dan Doctoroff)在迈克尔·布隆伯格(Michael Bloomberg)担任纽约市市长时曾是他的副手。他认为，大多数项目之所以失败是因为它们没能跨越一道“规划-技术分歧”。That divide, between tech types and city-planning specialists, will also need to be bridged before Sidewalk Labs can stick a shovel in the soggy ground at Quayside. Critics of the project worry that in a quest to become a global tech hub, Torontos politicians may give it too much freedom. Sidewalk Labss proposal notes that the project needs “substantial forbearances from existing city laws and regulations”.在人行道实验室在码头区开工之前，同样需要消除技术人员和城市规划专家之间的分歧。该项目的批评者担心，在多伦多寻求成为全球科技中心的过程中，这里的政客可能会给予它太多的自由。人行道实验室的方案指出，该项目需要“现有的(城市)法律和法规给予大量宽容”。It is not yet known what business model Sidewalk Labs plans for Quayside. Rohit Aggarwala, its head of urban systems, said at a public meeting in March that it is “frankly a little unclear” what it will be. Mr Doctoroff says the firm might make money by licensing the products and services it develops in Toronto and selling them to other cities. It is uncertain whether Torontonians who contributed data to hone the services would share the revenue.目前尚不知道人行道实验室计划在码头区采取何种商业模式。该公司负责城市体系的罗西特艾格瓦拉(Rohit Aggarwala)在 3月份的一次公开会议上透露，“坦白说这方面还不太清楚”。多克托洛夫表示，公司可能会通过把在多伦多开发的产品和服务授权并出售给其他城市来赚钱。尚不清楚贡献数据来打造这些服务的多伦多人是否能从中分得一杯羹。Privacy concerns will doubtless ariseover what data the sensors at Quayside will hoover up, who will own them, where they will be housed and so on. For now, Sidewalk Labs has said it will not use or sell personal information for advertising purposes and that the data will be subject to “open standards”, allowing other firms and agencies to make use of it. Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto have brought in a former federal privacy commissioner and a former privacy commissioner of Ontario as advisers.隐私问题将引发关切，这一点毫无疑问。人们将担忧码头区的传感器会收集什么数据，谁将拥有这些数据，数据将存放何处，等等。目前，人行道实验室已经表示，它不会出于广告宣传的目的使用或出售个人信息，并且数据将服从“开放标准”，允许其他企业和机构使用。人行道实验室和多伦多滨水公司已请到一位前联邦隐私专员和一位前安大略省隐私专员作顾问。But privacy experts call such assurances insufficient, because Canadas legal frameworks for data privacy and security lag behind the latest innovations from tech firms. “You can always choose whether or not to download an app on your phone,” says Kelsey Finch at the Future of Privacy Forum, a think-tank. “You cant easily opt out of the community that you live in.”但隐私专家称这些保证并不充分，因为加拿大在数据隐私和安全方面的法律框架滞后于科技公司最新的创新。智库未来隐私论坛(Future of Privacy Forum)的卡尔希芬奇(Kelsey Finch)说：“你总能选择是否在手机上下载一个应用。但你不能轻易退出你居住的社区。”