The Google smart city plan has been ditched in Portland, this is a shame as the designs were out of this world and it would have offered a green community.
Sidewalk is the sister company who had envisioned he ambitious plans, however first the Toronto plans were scrapped and now the Oregon.
There was a lot of controversy from the moment the plans were drawn up, this was predominately due to the personal data that would have been at the hands of Google, regarding the inhabitants.
Non-identifiable mobile locations were collected on the inhabitants and passed back to a central location to allow mapping of peoples movements.
The concept around this was to allow the company to select locations for efficient bus locations or cycle lanes, however it caused issues due to the mass collection of data.
There were also concerns raised regarding the transparency of the companies use of the data and what data was collected.
The original concept for the city was drastic and may have shaped how future cities will be designed.
The entire city would also have been green from wooden skyscrapers to autonomous cars and heated pavements.
