back to article Google's dream city isn't a new idea

A top Google executive says he’d love to build a city from scratch - without the messy humans getting in the way. Speaking at a conference, Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff first reminded the world that Google’s parent Alphabet was “the single most ambitious company that ever existed” apart from perhaps the Dutch East India …

  1. Steven Raith

    "I am Dan Doctoroff, and I'm here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

    "No," says the man in Washington, "it belongs to the poor."

    "No," says the man in the Vatican, "it belongs to God."

    "No," says the man in Moscow, "it belongs to everyone."

    ...I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture.

    A city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow,

    Rapture can become your city as well."

    Sorry, but someone had to do it.

    Steven R

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How long...

    .. until Google get tired of it and just abandon it as it did with several other projects?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How long...

      "Unfortunately owing to unsatisfactory revenues we are terminating our Project Earth experiment. Support for your planet will be turned off at the end of the month. You may be able to obtain a similar or related service by orbiting alpha Centauri."

      1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: How long...

        Or

        The Vogon Fleet will bew along shortly to demolish the city to make way for the new Galactic Super Highway that is sometimes called 'HS2'.

      2. Someone_Somewhere

        My only regret

        is that I have but one upvote to give you.

        > "Unfortunately owing to unsatisfactory revenues we are terminating our Project Earth experiment. Support for your planet will be turned off at the end of the month. You may be able to obtain a similar or related service by orbiting alpha Centauri." <

    2. Teiwaz
      Gimp

      Re: How long...

      ".. until Google get tired of it and just abandon it as it did with several other projects"

      - The paint won't even have time to dry.

      By the time Google moves all it's employees there, no subsidury service worker will be able to afford to live there.

      Even if they don't get bored with the idea. I give it Five years before the weight of the amassed egos sink the entire place into the core of the earth.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: How long...

        Even if they don't get bored with the idea. I give it Five years before the weight of the amassed egos sink the entire place into the core of the earth.

        Ah, but the wind energy you could generate from all that rising hot air..

        1. Captain DaFt

          Re: How long...

          "Ah, but the wind energy you could generate from all that rising hot air.."

          Then this'll never get approval to be built.

          The US government hates competition.

      2. BongoJoe
        Coat

        Re: How long...

        Even if they don't get bored with the idea. I give it Five years before the weight of the amassed egos sink the entire place into the core of the earth.

        Can't we use Bono as an egoCounterweight?

    3. Daggerchild Silver badge

      Re: How long...

      It would try and keep it alive throwing more and resources and thought at it until it was no longer be able to deny that engineering just can't solve some problems, whereupon they'd have an internal existential crisis and some employees would have mental breakdowns.

      It would be really fun to watch, and I don't mean that from a malignant f***-Google standpoint either. The juncture between the the Ordered Solution and the Chaotic Solution is possibly the richest seam of wisdom humanity could ever research, and can is ever be mined by shutting up, rolling up the sleeves and putting your money where your mouth is.

      I just wish people would stop stabbing each other because the hatefire and bloodsplatter is making it really hard to see what's going on here.

    4. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: How long...

      They'll get tired in about a year and a half, if Revolv is anything to go by.

      "As of May 2036, your house will no longer be available. The front door won't open and utilities won't work.

      "Our 10 year warranty against defects in materials or workmanship has expired.

      "Please feel free to try another Google product, MegaCity One."

  3. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Daggerchild Silver badge

      That's probably the plan - their existence seems to be distending San Francisco real estate prices and making their home a cauldron of resentment. It's a Googlescale solution to a Google scale problem.

  4. NoneSuch Silver badge
    FAIL

    A True Utopia

    Until the first humans move in, then it will go to the dogs.

    1. Ken 16 Silver badge

      Re: A True Utopia

      Until the first cats move in, then it'll go to...

    2. haiku

      Re: A True Utopia

      Don't forget: the rats will be there from the first ...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And the inhabitants will be paid in Google Scrip

    Only redeemable in the Google Store

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: And the inhabitants will be paid in Google Scrip

      And the inhabitants inmates will be paid in Google Scrip.

      FTFY.

  6. frank ly

    Dan Doctoroff

    If only he had a PhD.

  7. BurnT'offering

    A techno utopia is where ...

    neckbeards get to snog hot blondes

    1. Teiwaz

      Re: A techno utopia is where ...

      "neckbeards get to snog hot blondes"

      - I've been meaning to ask for some time. Where are these mythical neckbeards? The vast majority of 'neckbeards' I've seen in the last fifteen years have been on nutters on ISIS videos...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A techno utopia is where ...

        "The vast majority of 'neckbeards' I've seen in the last fifteen years have been on nutters on ISIS videos"

        Yes, ISIS does seem to have damaged the neckbeard brand somewhat. You can chalk up two useful outcomes of ISIS: uniting the Kurds and making neckbeards unfashionable.

        1. BurnT'offering

          Re: A techno utopia is where ...

          Sorry for using the old terminology for what has now been re-branded as chest-quiffs

  8. lucki bstard

    So after 2000+ years, bl**dy Aristotle is still inspiring people to build the perfect society... a la 'The Republic'. Great in theory, but Alexander the Great was interested in doing it in practise and look what he did! God knows what Alphabet would do.

    As for the Dutch East Indian Company, better comparison would be the British East Indian company, which conquered most of India and administrated it for longer than the British Raj.

    Thank goodness they'll loose interest when the next shiny idea comes past.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "So after 2000+ years, bl**dy Aristotle is still inspiring people to build the perfect society... a la 'The Republic'"

      Sorry to nitpick, but it was aristocratic early Fascistic philosopher Plato who wrote The Republic, Aristotle was the one who wanted people to go out, observe and perform experiments and find what worked. Aristotle was indeed tutor to Alexander the Great but unfortunately he didn't get to tutor Alexander's generals, which is why everything went pearshaped when Alexander died.

      Plato was a thoroughly nasty piece of work and The Republic is an attempt to justify aristarchy - rule by the self-style "best" rather than democracy. From that point of view our current rulers do in fact subscribe to Plato's views. But leave Aristotle out of it.

      1. lucki bstard

        yep your dead right, my apologies.

        In my defence its 20 years since I did a degree in that stuff.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "In my defence its 20 years since I did a degree in that stuff."

          No need to apologise. It's over 40 in my case, but when you retire there seems to be a tendency for the intervening period to recede and to revert to the relatively carefree days of being a student. It's as if I took 40 years off to get married, raise family and buy various durable goods, and then back to post-graduation.

  9. Ken 16 Silver badge

    Oath of Fealty (1981)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_Fealty_%28novel%29

    " The arcology dwellers have evolved a different culture, sacrificing privacy - there are cameras even in the private apartments - in exchange for security. The residents are fiercely loyal to the arcology and its management, and the loyalty runs both ways"

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Please make your way to your designated Ark.

    "Walker was part of a group of radical scientists and prominent public intellectuals, including molecular biologist JD Bernal and geneticist JBS Haldane, who called for a new colony of 100,000 scientists and engineers. This would be free from the “constraints and social errors” that non-engineers introduce - or non-engineers might wish to vote for."

    And they would have lived full, rich and happy lives until being wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Please make your way to your designated Ark.

      "And they would have lived full, rich and happy lives until being wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone."

      In Brave New World Mustapha Mond comments in passing that it wouldn't have worked. Huxley's solution was to have small colonies of awkward squad intellectuals on islands. It really is quite funny, though, seeing how seriously people took Bernal and Haldane's wackier ideas in the first part of the 20th century. And then try to think of who their modern equivalents are.

  11. Alfred

    Been tried, doesn't work

    Covered in detail within James C. Scott's "Seeing Like a State". It ends up with unliveable cities like Brasilia, surrounded by zones in which the humans actually get to be humans.

    1. Alistair
      Coat

      Re: Been tried, doesn't work

      @Alfred:

      Its lots of fun to pull up the concept, build and final review movies of Brasillia, and then drive there.

      Hysterical in fact.

      And to think they chewed up all that viable land to do it with too.

      -> the one with A Map of the Sky in the pocket please, great read

  12. Chozo
    Joke

    So when is the Delta City project and the bulldozing of old Detroit starting?

    1. John G Imrie

      Damit

      You beat me to it. I thought it sounded more OCP than H. G. Wells.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Damit

        I was going to go for High Rise...

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Technocrats, bureaucrats, they're all people.

    We need to remove people from the equation of the day-to-day running of cities.

    It's always people that fuck things up.

    Seriously though, a well planned, intelligently set up city should pretty much run itself.

    The day we sack all the politicians, will be a good day indeed.

  14. Charlie van Becelaere
    Black Helicopters

    Down the kakistocracy!

    The subject line says it all.

  15. x 7

    "A top Google executive says he’d love to build a city from scratch - without the messy humans getting in the way."

    Disney tried this years ago - the EPCOT Centre

    1. Mark 85
      Devil

      The earliest feasible idea was Buckminster Fuller's for a geodesic dome over.... East St. Louis*. As I recall this was the original concept for Epcot.

      It's a pity that he and Google can't get together on this. Once all the Oompa Loompas are in place, including all the management, etc., we lock the doors from the outside. A week later we disconnect the power.

      *That was his dream. He did dream big at times.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    A city founded by Google?

    Will they name it Sodom, or Gomorah?

    1. Teiwaz

      Re: A city founded by Google?

      "Will they name it Sodom, or Gomorah?"

      - More likely Soddingexpensive or Googlemoolah.

      (incidentally, we all know what the residents of Soddom were supposed to be 'up to', but what was Gomorahs 'entertainment of an evening'?)

      1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        Re: A city founded by Google?

        "(incidentally, we all know what the residents of Soddom were supposed to be 'up to', but what was Gomorahs 'entertainment of an evening'?)"

        I've been asking myself this since I first read about it. Always open for suggestions on how to spend the weekend.

  17. Daggerchild Silver badge

    Yo Ho Ho and *HeEURGh*

    I expected the first synthetic cities to be sea based as it would be easier to sort out the legal issues (although seeing the amount of **** they stirred up just with those empty barges..).

    Lots of fun engineering problems there. It's hard to rezone city chunks as the city grows, but with a floating segmented city..

    "Sire, quadrant 43 voted for Trump.."

    1. John Styles

      Re: Yo Ho Ho and *HeEURGh*

      That would be a violation of the 3rd Benthic Treaty with the Deep Ones.

  18. Stevie

    Bah!

    EPCOT v 1.

    Celebration.

    More to come no doubt. Disney can be scary when it puts on its thinking cap.

    1. GitMeMyShootinIrons

      Re: Bah!

      I was just thinking that the Mickey Mouse outfit planned to build a city of tomorrow which became EPCOT.

      At EPCOT, you don't trap the mouse - the mouse traps YOU!

  19. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    Google doing a Le Corbusier - what could possibly go wrong?

    See also Ville Contemporaine, Ville Radieuse, Athens Charter. Interesting and useful theoretical exercises for Urban Planners*, but if you believe this sort of thing will work as planned...

    *Don't mess with Urban Planners. They can be world class assholes.

  20. Sureo
    WTF?

    “the single most ambitious company that ever existed”

    No, “the single most arrogant company that ever existed”

    Google for Mayor! Google for Governor!! Google for President!!!

  21. PJD

    Good. The sooner google fucks off and leaves San Francisco to revert to the chaotic, artistic, crazy social experiment it was before google and the rest of the tech industry drove rents up to such an extreme all the artists and wingnuts couldn't afford to live there, the better.

  22. Colin Millar

    Engineers v Politicians

    It is very fashionable these days to blame politicians for all the ills of the world (I go in for a bit of pol bashing myself now and then) - but for supposedly intelligent people to propose that simply banishing politicians is the answer (or even part of the answer) just shows that they are even less suited than the pols to dealing with the inevitable problems thrown up when 7+ billion carbon based life forms with free will, emotions, fears and abstract thinking are all trying to get from her to there (eventually).

    Absolutist obedience to the scientists and engineers is just as bad as blaming politicians that we elected because they told us what we wanted to hear.

    Too much blind faith it will blind us - though sometimes it's a blessing.

  23. Chris G

    No People No City

    Cities are convenient places where more and more people gather to live until it becomes a lot bigger than a town, it is the people that make it a city, the huge variation of wants and needs,skills, races etc that gives a city an identity.

    If you build the city first and then try to populate with selected people, you get

    Milton Keynes!

  24. Dr Paul Taylor

    Bring back the Berlin wall!

    No, I don't mean that literally.

    During the Cold War, we had the Communist "Control Economy" to point at as an object lesson in how not to run an economy or a society. Without it, the victorious Capitalist system has become more and more of a Control Economy, in which only the CEOs of huge companies are allowed to say how things should be done and ordinary people just have to do as they are told.

    The reason why The Free Market and Democracy, and indeed Evolution by Natural Selection, work is that many minds are better than one.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Dr. Paul Taylor - Re: Bring back the Berlin wall!

      Careful here, doc!

      I was trying to explain democracy to my 11 year old son when it suddenly hit me. What if a majority democratically vote to exterminate a minority ? Preventing this would be undemocratic i.e. against the free will of the majority but allowing this would be immoral. Where would be the limit of the democratic process ? Who and how can impose this limit ?

      Long ago, a politician in my country used to say "Better to have a healthy dictatorship instead of a sick democracy".

  25. Kev99 Silver badge

    That's basically what Walt Disney planned with EPCOT (Experimental Planned Community of Tomorrow). And we all know where that went.

  26. earl grey
    WTF?

    'able to disconnect you remotely."

    that sounds....wait....what?................................

  27. Captain DaFt

    Grand companies with grand ideas for Utopia

    It always seems to work So well.

    "Pullman is the only city in the world built scientifically and artistically in every part, and from a central idea within one man," Duane Doty

    Really, really didn't end well.

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Grand companies with grand ideas for Utopia

      I see your Pullmann and raise you one Fordlandia.

      Thanks for the link, I never knew Pullmann ever did this.

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