TORONTO - Alphabet Inc's urban innovation company Sidewalk Labs hopes to break ground on its first ever smart-city project in Toronto in 2020, and begin testing some of the proposed technologies this summer, its chief executive told Reuters.

This is the first time a timeline has been publicly disclosed for the project designed to increase land efficiency, cut costs and conserve energy in one of the world's priciest housing markets as development struggles to catch up with a rapidly growing population.

The IoTCC and InsightaaS have released a major new report that explores challenge and opportunity in the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in smart communities. IoValue: intelligence in Community Ecosystems is the first report in a series of best practice papers co-developed by members of the IoTCC, led by Mary Allen of InsightaaS.

The concept of “smart” city or community is not new; in fact, city operators have been using network connectivity and computing for a long time, deploying technology to support digital processes for applications ranging from back office records to property tax billing to the control of water and electricity distribution. But 'intelligent community' is another proposition, and one of the first questions addressed by the report working group is how to describe it and who to include – is intelligent community restricted to municipal government, or are there other groups involved, and what are its physical limits? The IoTCC group used the following diagram to illustrate the collaborative nature of the community.

Sidewalk Labs, the unit of Google-parent Alphabet Inc. set to turn a chunk of Toronto’s waterfront into a test bed for “smart city” technologies, took pains at a public meeting Tuesday night to address fears its plans would see citizens spied upon or their governments’ authority usurped.

Hundreds of people packed a room at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre to attend “public round table” sessions put on by Sidewalk and Waterfront Toronto, which last fall picked the three-year-old New York-based company to help develop − for a start − a 12-acre parcel called Quayside.

A high-tech neighbourhood designed by Google’s sibling company has been pegged as a way for Toronto to become a hub in the burgeoning field of urban innovation.

“From a very practical perspective on an economic development basis, the smart cities or urban innovation area is a booming area that some would say is a $25 trillion dollar opportunity worldwide,” said Kristina Verner, vice president of innovation, sustainability and prosperity at Waterfront Toronto.

A new advanced manufacturing "supercluster" of area research and industry players announced by the federal government Thursday will pay enormous economic benefits for Hamilton, local business leaders say.

The move — part of a $950-million series of initiatives across Canada — is being described as a major shot-in-the-arm to a burgeoning network powerhouse developing between Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo and Hamilton.

"We are evolving into a more regional economy and we have to be able to evolve it further to remain globally competitive," says Keanin Loomis, president of the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce.

Last month, the Toronto Region learned it had made Amazon’s shortlist of 20 potential candidates to host its second North American headquarters. We are honoured to have been included in this esteemed group of incredible cities — even more so as Canada’s representative on the list.

This is an unmistakable sign that our region is regarded as one of the best destinations in North America for investment and expansion. The Amazons of the world are taking note, and we believe it’s the start of big things to come for our region.

When Sidewalk Labs hosted a public forum in Toronto last November to gather feedback on its plan to build a data-driven innovation hub on a mostly derelict stretch of industrial waterfront, several participants posed tough questions about how the company, a subsidiary of Alphabet/Google, would address privacy issues—questions that have yet to be answered some three months later.

Mayor John Tory has announced that the City of Toronto is launching two smart traffic signal pilot projects to test the latest adaptive traffic management technologies, in order to evaluate which of two rival systems is most suitable for Canada’s largest city.

As its fourth largest city, Toronto was the first in North America to deploy a computerized traffic signal control system when it introduced the technology in the 1960s. The city currently uses a mix of earlier generation traffic systems, some of which are over 20 years old, to control about 2,400 traffic signals.

TORONTO — In 2012, Geoffrey Hinton changed the way machines see the world.

Along with two graduate students at the University of Toronto, Mr. Hinton, a professor there, built a system that could analyze thousands of photos and teach itself to identify common objects like flowers and cars with an accuracy that didn’t seem possible.

He and his students soon moved to Google, and the mathematical technique that drove their system — called a neural network — spread across the tech world. This is how autonomous cars recognize things like street signs and pedestrians.

Google’s founders have long fantasized about what would happen if the company could shape the real world as much as it has life on the internet.

“Years ago, we were sitting there thinking, Wouldn’t it be nice if you could take technical things that we know and apply them to cities?” Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Alphabet (now Google’s parent company), said Tuesday. “And our founders got really excited about this. We started talking about all of these things that we could do if someone would just give us a city and put us in charge.”