Cidade inteligente, enclave privado (2)

Deu na BBC News 
18-05-2019, por Jane Wakefield 
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47815344

The Google city that has angered Toronto

That would include autonomous cars, innovative ways to collect rubbish and shared spaces for communities to come together in new ways.

Sidewalk Toronto’s vision for urban development (Sidewalk Toronto)
Fonte: Yahoo FinanceClique na imagem para ampliar

Sidewalk Labs, a sister company to Google, had earmarked disused land in Toronto, Canada for this bold urban experiment, which it hoped would become a model for other cities around the world.

The fact that it would be collecting a lot of data from sensors placed all around the harbourside development unsettled some.Now many are asking whether a private firm should take charge of urban improvement at all.

(..)

This group [Block Sidewalk] was formed because leaked documents in the Toronto Star suggested Sidewalk Labs had a far grander vision than the 12-acre (48,500-sq m) site it had talked about. We were concerned that we were not getting transparency," Ms Wylie told the BBC.

The article she refers to alleged that the Google-affiliate wanted to build a much bigger neighbourhood at Quayside and provide new transport for it.

In return for its investment it wanted a share of property taxes, development fees and increased value of city land that would normally go to the city.

This has not been disputed by Sidewalk Labs. (Continua)

2019-05-19

Cidade inteligente, enclave privado

Deu no Yahoo Finance 
15-02-2019, por Jessy Bains 
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/google-sister-company-wants-cut-torontos-property-taxes-developing-smart-city-164129521.html

Google sister company wants a cut of Toronto's property taxes for developing smart city

Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs wants a cut of Toronto’s revenue to build out its vision of a futuristic data-driven smart city.

Sidewalk Toronto’s vision for urban development (Sidewalk Toronto)
Fonte: Yahoo FinanceClique na imagem para ampliar

The project has been controversial from the start. Critics have been calling out the Google (GOOG) sister company and its partner Waterfront Toronto for lack of clarity around data collection and intellectual property. 

Sidewalk Toronto is offering to help finance transit projects through the neighbouring Portlands area to speed up the process. Sidewalk Toronto says it should get a portion of developer fees and property taxes in exchange for developing the currently rundown area which is 30 times larger than the Quayside neighbourhood where Sidewalk Toronto plans to build its smart city.

Sidewalk Toronto also says it could build a new Canadian headquarters on Villiers Island and a timber factory in Ontario to build help build the smart city — creating 4,000 jobs in the process. (Continua)

2019-02-20

Moradia do dinheiro

Deu no Mother Jones maio-junho 2017, por Paul Roberts https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/hedge-city-vancouver-chinese-foreign-capital/

Is Your City Being Sold Off to Global Elites?

Visas for sale, skyrocketing housing prices, miles of condos

Fonte: https://www.vancouverrealestatepodcast.com
/podcast/speculation-is-good-for-vancouver/

It’s midmorning on a Saturday in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, and this is maybe the 20th example we’ve seen of what locals call the “empty-house syndrome"—homes purchased by foreign nationals, many of them wealthy Chinese, and left to sit vacant. Some will eventually have occupants; Vancouver is a top destination for well-heeled emigrants. But often, the new owners treat the houses as little more than vehicles for spiriting capital out of China. By one recent estimate, 67,000 homes, condos, and apartments in the Vancouver metro area, or about 6.5 percent of the total, are either empty or “underused”—an appalling statistic, given a housing market so tight that rental vacancy rates are below 1 percent. Hence the shoes: To shield absentee owners from public opprobrium, niche firms specializing in “vacant-property maintenance” will arrange elaborate camouflages—everything from timed light switches and “garden staging” to artful props, like pumpkins at Halloween and wreaths at Christmas.

(..) For wealthy Chinese, Vancouver has emerged as the perfect “hedge city”—scenic, cosmopolitan, with good schools, a long-standing Chinese community, and an undervalued (by global standards) real estate market where capital can be sheltered against mounting economic and political uncertainties back home. In 2015 alone, according to estimates by Canada’s National Bank Financial, Chinese purchases of real estate in the Vancouver metropolitan area amounted to nearly $ 10 billion, or a third of the total dollar amount spent on city real estate. (Figures are in US dollars unless otherwise noted.) So popular is Vancouver among hedgers that local real estate firms send Mandarin-speaking recruiters to Chinese cities to entice buyers to take bus tours of Vancouver’s upscale neighborhoods.

But for many longtime residents, Vancouver’s evolving role as a giant safety deposit box for China’s elite has been profoundly destabilizing. Thanks in part to foreign capital, home prices here have more than doubled since 2006. In one 12-month period (mid-2015 to mid-2016), the median price for a single-family house jumped nearly 40 percent, to $ 1.17 million, making Vancouver almost as expensive as San Francisco, but with a job market that is far less varied and robust. (Continua)

2017-07-15

Hedge cities

Deu no The New Yorker

19-05-2015, por James Surowiecki

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/26/real-estate-goes-global

Real Estate Goes global

“(..) Vancouver isn’t an obvious superstar. It’s not home to a major industry—as New York and London are to finance, or San Francisco to tech—and it doesn’t have the cultural cachet of Paris or Milan. Instead, Vancouver’s appeal consists of comfort and security, making it what Andy Yan calls a “hedge city.” “What hedge cities offer is social and political stability, and, in the case of Vancouver, it also offers long-term protection against climate change,” he said.

Vancouver, Canadá
Imagem: Internet

(..) The globalization of real estate upends some of our basic assumptions about housing prices. We expect them to reflect local fundamentals—above all, how much people earn. In a truly global market, that may not be the case. If there are enough rich people in China who want property in Vancouver, prices can float out of reach of the people who actually live and work there. So just because prices look out of whack doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a bubble. Instead, wealthy foreigners are rationally overpaying, in order to protect themselves against risk at home. (..)

The challenge for Vancouver and cities like it is that foreign investment isn’t an unalloyed good. It’s great for existing homeowners, who see the value of their homes rise, and for the city’s tax revenues. But it also makes owning a home impossible for much of the city’s population. And the tendency of foreign buyers not to inhabit investment properties raises the spectre of what Yan has called “zombie neighborhoods.” (Continua)

2014-06-15