Sidewalk Labs’ Toronto headquarters is located at 307 Lake Shore Boulevard, right on the city’s waterfront. The building’s exterior is brightly painted in the industrial-gentrification chic style. The interior is part of a community outreach effort, filled with a slew of engaging dioramas and exhibits about technology and cities. But in many ways, the floor beneath is the space’s centerpiece. As visitors move from exhibit to exhibit, they walk across a plywood surface of hexagonal tiles — a system that Sidewalk Labs and designer Carlo Ratti, the director of the Senseable City Lab at MIT, call the “Dynamic Street.”

The real tiles — which will be made of concrete and be capable of housing sensors, signage and heating coils to melt snow — will make up an urban surface system that Sidewalk hopes to deploy across its project area in Quayside, right outside 307’s door. Dynamic Street has been designed to enable the elimination of curbs, introducing one flat hardscape that can change from street to sidewalk to plaza to parking as needed, with tiles changing colors to designate the appropriate usage. Read More