Google City

City Designed & illustrated by Sheng Yi Lee 13 June 2041

Future Now Master of Architecture Studio E The University of Melbourne

This project would not have been possible without the help and support of; My family and friends My tutors, Jannette Le & Mond Qu My classmates at Studio 22 My inspiration, Google

Printed and bound in Melbourne June 2041

City A different kind of city.

Designed & illustrated by Sheng Yi Lee March - June 2041

City

About

A different kind of City Google City is the leading model of cities born from unlimited access to high-speed Internet - and it all starts with Fiber.

We are proud to announce our first Google City in Santiago, Chile, 27 years after Fiber was first implemented in 2014.

This informational booklet outlines the process involved in the creation of Google City and details of its execution.

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Contents

Research 6 8 9

The physical internet Google Fiber Visualising virtual data

Santiago & the internet in 2014 18 20 21

Hello, Santiago.

Internet use in Latin America Global trends

Google City, 2041 22 24 29

Overview How we did it Meet Pablo and Luis

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Behind the scenes

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Research

The physical internet Google would not exist without our fleet of data centers and the undersea cables that form the backbone of the internet.

With every click, a complex network of cables and servers work together to bring you information. And for the internet to grow bigger, we need to build more of these servers, which we store in our data centers across the world. The closer you are to our data centers, the faster Google will load on your screen1, and we want every internet user to see what they want in the blink of an eye. We helped to make access to the internet even faster in 2012 with Fiber, and we did this by routing bigger fiber-optic cables across many communities.

In 2014, Google’s 12th data center was officially completed in Quilicura, a small town northwest of Santiago, Chile. This is the location of the world’s first Google City. [next page]

Distribution of undersea cables1 and Google’s data centers2, 2014 1

‘New Asia servers to make Google services 30% faster’, Indu Nandakumar, The Economic Times, January 2013.

Submarine Cable Map 2014 by TeleGeography 3 Google’s data centers, http://www.google.com.au/about/datacenters/locations/ 2

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Research

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Research

Google Fiber Google Fiber was first introduced to Kansas City in 2012. Fiber offered internet connections up to 1,000Mbps - that is approximately 100 times faster than the average broadband speed in 2014. On top of high-speed internet, Fiber included crystal clear HDTV and 1TB of cloud storage space.1 By 2014 we were involved in discussions with 34 cities in 9 metro areas around the United States2 about our new fiber-optic network. Fiber had drawn huge interest from consumers and communities, and we were very excited at the prospect of bringing Fiber international.

That’s why later that year we announced our plans for city-wide access to Fiber in Santiago, Chile, to coincide with the opening of our first Latin American data center in Quilicura, just northwest of the city center. And this is when Google City was born.

Today, Fiber boasts speeds up to 10,000Mbps. Our aim has always been to provide people with instantaneous access to information. With Fiber, there is no such thing as waiting - and with Google City, there is no such thing as being disconnected.

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Google Fiber, http://fiber.google.com/about/ Google Fiber, http://fiber.google.com/newcities/

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Research

Visualising virtual data Before we began work on Google City, we needed to study the nature of virtual “cities�, which would inform their physical counterparts. By imagining the physicality of virtual networks, fluctuating traffic and patterns of use, we were able to grasp a greater understanding of the internet population.

The beauty of virtual connectivity is that physical boundaries no longer matter. With the internet, you can do almost everything, anywhere.

So we took a few of our favourite Google products and put them to the test: how would they shape our future?

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Google Fiber Even in 2014, Fiber to basic broadband was much like comparing our Nexus tablets to traditional notepads - and we’re not even boasting. We don’t mean to leave anyone behind, and Google is devoted to making sure of that.

To help you understand the gravity of Fiber’s contribution to digital accessibility, we have created these maps to show you just how fast Fiber really is. [right]

A study of speed [next page]

Fiberwall

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Google Now Google Now converts your mobile into an intelligent personal assistant, bringing you the information you want when you need it.

Every day we are forced to make choices, and sometimes we don’t feel like we can make them on our own. That’s why we thought of combining the immediacy of Google Now with the emotional awareness of a therapist to give you Google Life.

Can’t tell if your partner is angry at you? Not sure what degree to take? Google Life tracks your lifestyle decisions and gives you advice whenever you are stuck in a rut. In case of an emergency, Life also offers autopilot mode. [next page]

Google Life, 2041.

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Google Drive We are constantly updating our Cloud services to make data storage more affordable and accessible to everybody.

We imagine a future where data becomes as important as money, withdrawn and deposited whenever necessary.

Think data ATMs. Think of a Cloud Bank.

Every piece of virtual information needs to be backed up securely, and Google is here to make sure of that. [next page]

Cloud Bank, 2041.

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Research

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Project Loon Google launched Project Loon in June 2013 with the intent of connecting people in remote areas and filling in coverage gaps.

These internet-providing balloons float in the stratosphere and travel by catching the wind going in the direction they’re after.

We predicted that Project Loon would be a launch pad for Googlisation - a future where everybody can enjoy the benefits of Google’s world of products simply by being connected. [next page]

Global Googlisation, 2041.

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Santiago & the internet in 2014

Hello, Santiago.

Santiago is the capital of Chile and the fifth largest city in Latin America. Internet use in Santiago is young and social, and increasingly mobile.

We are proud to call Santiago home to Latin America’s first data center, and the world’s first Google City.

[next page]

Google Maps image of Santiago, 2014

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Santiago & the internet in 2014

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Santiago & the internet in 2014

Internet use in Latin America There were many significant developments in Latin America when we were in the early stages of deciding where we could test our plan for a Google City. We wanted to choose a place that would flourish with Fiber and propel the economy of the internet forward - and Latin America was the best place to start. Because we were already in the process of completing our data center in Chile, we knew that Santiago would make a fantastic Google City.

Here are some of the outstanding statistics1 that caught our attention: 1. Latin America is the fastest-growing internet population in the world 2. 92% of internet users in Latin America access social networking sites 3. Growth of social TV is the fastest in Latin America In 2012 the broadband penetration in Chile stood at only 61.4%2 - so we asked ourselves, what would happen if we could maximise our outreach?

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‘The Internet is Booming in Latin America, Especially Among Younger Users’, David Deans, Cisco Blogs, October 2013 Internet users (per 100 people), The World Bank

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Santiago & the internet in 2014

Global trends The world was showing signs of change in social and economic change in 2014 - it was a matter of time before they stopped being speculations and became reality.

Fiber only sped this process up.

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Google City 2041 We are very pleased to unveil Google City to the world.

Within the first 5 years of Fiber’s implementation in Santiago in 2014, we observed a few major changes that would point Google City in the direction that we have arrived at today.

As work became increasingly mobile and flexible, offices were abandoned in favour of a new Cloud-based working culture. Retailers and commercial entities also moved to the Cloud as high-speed internet improved the experience of online shopping, soon becoming the popular among homebound internet users. With Fiber’s crystal clear HDTV, the success of social TV in Santiago skyrocketed and established itself as the main source of entertainment and recreation in the city.

All these events left us with empty offices, shops and parks, and a high demand for better delivery infrastructure - and it was our job to put them into good use.

The future of the internet is ripe with endless possibilities, and this is one of them. We like what we see, and so do the people of Santiago. It’s only about to get better.

The following pages detail the chronology of Google’s interventions at city scale and illustrate the changes at street level through the story of Pablo and Luis.

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How we did it Google City was established over a period of 27 years - and here’s how we did it, step by step.

2014 Opening of Google’s first data center in Quilicura

Implementation of Fiber

2018 Former Los Cerrillos Airport is converted into the first Gmail terminal and shipping center

2024 Movistar Arena is converted into the second Gmail shipping center

Parks and open spaces are converted into subsidiary Gmail centers with the launch of the Park-to-Post (P2P) initiative

We announce the first Google Towns along the city fringe with the expansion of Gmail’s services

2025 We begin converting high-rise office towers and commercial buildings into data greenhouses in Providencia

2041 We officially unveil the world’s first Google City!

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2014 Opening of Google’s first data center in Quilicura

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Implementation of city-wide Fiber

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2018 Former Los Cerrillos Airport is converted into the

first Gmail terminal and shipping center

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2024 Movistar Arena is converted into the second

Gmail shipping center

2024 We announce the first Google Towns along the

city fringe with the expansion of Gmail’s services

Parks and open spaces are converted into subsidiary Gmail centers with the launch of the Park-to-Post (P2P) initiative

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2025 We begin converting high-rise office towers and

commercial buildings into data greenhouses in Providencia

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2041 We officially unveil the world’s first Google City!

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Here’s how Santiago has changed from 2014 to 2041: 2014

City center lies in the financial district of Providencia

61.4% internet penetration 1Mbps Google Fiber speed

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Decentralised, nodal network

96.5% internet penetration 1Gbps Google Fiber speed

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Google’s virtual (wireless) network Your device to the Cloud - 0.001s

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Google’s physical network Closest Gmail center to your doorstep - 5 - 30 minutes* *Estimation is based on data from Google Maps

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Meet Pablo and Luis.

So how do the systems that operate on a smaller, pedestrian scale look like? Let us take you through Google City by following a simple routine of gift-giving.

Pablo and Luis live in different parts of the city, and Pablo wants to send Luis a present for his 24th birthday - here’s how he does it.

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Pablo lives in Puente Alto, on the hilly slopes of southeast Santiago.

He sends Luis a Gmail with his mobile, and attaches a gift he bought through Google Shopping.

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Never feel left out.

Stay connected wherever you are.

This means you’ll never have to worry about living “too far” away from amenities again. In Google City, rural and suburban living don’t exist, because Fiber has decentralised the structure of a traditional city. Our mission with Google Towns was to break the traditional perception of urban life. It isn’t where tall buildings and people with suits are - it’s wherever the internet is, even if you have sheep grazing in your backyard.

From 2014 to 2041 we estimated that the population of Santiago would expand by at least 4 million1. To accommodate this growth we saw the opportunity to bring people out towards the fringe of the city and back to nature2. Fiber would follow, and with it a Gmail center for each new development.

Need a ride? Book a Google Cab with your phone3 and get picked up within five minutes, wherever you are. Gone are the days of waiting at the taxi rank or the bus stop. In Google City, you no longer have to deal with the rigidity of bus schedules and the unpredictability of taxi drivers. Plus: we do the driving for you.

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World Population Review based on information from the United Nations, http:// worldpopulationreview.com/countries/chile-population/ 2 ‘Maipu, Puente Alto and Quilicura lead Santiago’s population growth’, Cate Setterfields, The Santiago Times, November 2006, http://santiagotimes.cl/chile-maipu-puente-alto-and-quilicuralead-santiagos-population-growth/ 3 ‘What Uber Will Do With All That Money From Google’, Marcus Wohlsen, January 2014, http://www.wired.com/2014/01/uber-travis-kalanick/ 32

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Remember the last time you went to a remote area and couldn’t check your Gmail?

And there wasn’t a taxi in sight?

Throw away your previous assumptions of countryside living - connectivity to Google Towns are both virtual and physical, faster than you can ever imagine.

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Pablo’s Gmail is sent to the Cloud. Now the Gmail is split - the Gmail is sent to Luis’s mobile, and the instruction to deliver a gift attachment is relayed to the Gmail shipping center closest to the destination.

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recharge up to 100x 85kWh electric cars

200MW data center

8.5MWh/day waste heat

energy converter

recharge station

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Meet the new Cloud that gives back mileage.

We launched our data center in Quilicura in 2014; Google’s first in Latin America. Our passion for renewable energy and a greener future ensures that each Google facility is constantly looking for innovative solutions to local issues.

In conjunction with our community grants program in Quilicura, we will be providing locals with free public transport using Google’s own driverless, electric cars. These taxis will be powered by electricity generated by waste heat from the data center itself.

Your Google searches now power cars!

With a battery capacity of 85kWh these cars run for 490km1 - that’s about 4 days of mileage. At present our data center has 8.5MWh heat output per day and can recharge up to 100 cars daily2, just enough to fully service the community in Quilicura. Our engineers are working hard to improve our energy-harvesting technology, so that one day we can extend our free charging facility to more people, for a cleaner environment.

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Tesla Motors, http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric Estimation is based on data from Tieto project report, Green Enterprise IT Award 2011 5

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These drawings show how an additional recharge station and parking for rechargeable Google cars have been incorporated in the data center layout.

Because our cars are driverless, we were able to reduce the space required for parking 100 vehicles.

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The Gmail center receives instructions to send the attachment to Luis’ home in Providencia.

Parcels are dispatched via delivery vans for standard Gmail, and via air drones for express Gmail within a 1km radius.

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Gmail just got physical.

With the migration of retailers to the Cloud and the death of the desk job, the postal economy needed to expand. We incorporated our very own delivery infrastructure in Santiago by bringing Gmail to the physical world, to ensure that you receive all mail and attachments as quickly as possible.

Gmail is coming to your doorstep!

We purchased Santiago’s former aviation facility, Los Cerrillos Airport, in 2018 to set up Google’s first ever Gmail terminal - and the world’s first physical inbox.

6 years later we bought Movistar Arena from telecommunications company Telefonica, and begun the transformation of this indoor stadium into Google’s second Gmail shipping center in the city. In 2024 we launched the Park-to-Post (P2P) project across Santiago to convert parks and recreational arenas into subsidiary Gmail shipping centers to speed up delivery time.

We have also improved efficiency within Gmail centers by allowing our robots1 to give us a helping hand. Sparrow, our air drone, and Kong, a heavy-duty lifting arm, currently operate in most of our centers. This means that we let the machines do the tedious, dangerous work - and our employees finish off the finer details of handling your attachments.

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‘Meet Google’s Robot Army. It’s Growing.’, Adam Clark Estes, January 2014, http://gizmodo. com/a-humans-guide-to-googles-many-robots-1509799897 2 Fictional derivatives of existing air drones and Bot&Dolly 5 40

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Internal layout of the Gmail center (Movistar Arena) and robotic components of the delivery system.

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Luis is at the Google fresh food market when he receives the original Gmail from Pablo.

At the same time, a Gmail van delivers the gift to his doorstep.

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rainwater harvesting

recycled water for plants

rising waste heat

recycled water for cooling servers

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Say hello to your green skyline.

The financial district of Providencia was considered the center of Santiago in 2014 until Fiber stepped in. Most offices were completely abandoned by 2025, so we decided to transform these once-glorious icons of capitalism into Santiago’s extended Cloud1 - this time, a shade greener.

The mass migration of businesses to the Cloud made it crucial for us to expand our data center infrastructure. The office towers were ideal because of their existing internal cooling systems and direct access to all major telecommunications networks, ensuring 99.99% uptime.

Just like the Cloud in Quilicura, we want to recycle waste heat from our servers - but in this instance, we will use the rising hot air to power greenhouses containing local fruit, herbs and vegetables that occupy the top half of each building2.

These buildings now form the urban agricultural center3 of Santiago and illustrate a healthy relationship between data and local produce. We are very excited to see this trend go global.

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‘Adaptive Reuse: A High-Rise Data Center’, Benjamin van Loon, November 2013, http://gbdmagazine. com/2013/24-sabey-data-center-properties/ 2 ‘Hackable buildings’, Shawn Gehle, TEDxTalks 2013 3 Tekniska Verken, Sweden by SymbioCity Urban Agriculture

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These drawings show the overall layout of data greenhouses in Providencia, and the adaptive reuse of a typical high-rise building.

Some floor plates have been removed to increase ceiling heights for greenhouse spaces, and remaining levels have added floor structure to carry the weight of soil. The existing service core will carry rising waste heat and distribute recycled rainwater for watering and cooling purposes.

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What we’ve learnt (so far) In 2014, the world had yet to discover an entirely new field of architectural study the physical implications of a lifestyle increasingly dependent on virtual networks.

The most important 21st century site condition is, above all, the internet.

Our team has already been in contact with several architectural companies to discuss how we can make Google City an internationally-viable development model, because we know that what we have achieved so far is only the beginning.

We remain optimistic that Google City will thrive as the new face of the virtual revolution. Using Santiago as our first case study, we hope to carry out our second development in Mumbai, India as early as 2043.

Keep a look out for us - we may be coming to your city very soon.

[next page]

All 4 city fragments in Santiago drawn as a single landscape, representing Google City as a collection of discrete locations united by the internet.

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Appendix

Appendix We have compiled a collection of ideas, notes and sketches produced by our design team leading up to the formalisation of Google City. The following pages show additional research material and other design options for Google City that we decided were less feasible.

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If brands were civilisations ...

The first question we asked ourselves was: if architecture is a reflection of culture, and our culture is consumerism, would our cities be shaped by brands?

What would these cities look like?

The following illustrations are personal interpretations of Google City, Apple City and Samsung City, drawing heavily on symbology and analogy.

[right]

Apple coin, from Apple City

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Google City 50

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Samsung City

Apple City 51

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Further research These system maps use research on Google to develop a visual language that allows us to give some physicality to information, which we have refined under ‘Visualising virtual data’. [above]

Traffic data across Google products from USA and China, March 14 - 15, 2014.

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Traffic data from Google Maps and Earth across all timezones, March 15 - 16, 2014.

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Google’s biggest acquisitions since 1997 54

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Google’s products according to function 55

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Internet democracy advocated by Google 56

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The “filter bubble” In 2011, Eli Pariser1 spoke about the dangers of the internet creating filter bubbles around information.

Google Search is, essentially, the most sophisticated filter over the web.

Would this pose a threat to internet freedom and democracy? We didn’t think so - but we thought we would see what sort of Google City would come out of a controversial idea like this.

Over the next 8 pages we show our best attempts at rationalising a Google City powered by an algorithmic filter. It may seem a little sinister, but it was definitely a fun exercise for our design team. [right]

Conceptual sketch of a city driven by information filtering [next spread]

Filtered city, drawn in analogy to the physical internet 1

‘Beware online “filter bubbles”’, Eli Pariser, TED March 2011.

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Preliminary ideas for Google City Despite our original intent of creating digital inclusion back in 2012, Fiber inadvertently highlighted the existing social divide in Kansas City, widening the digital gap between the upper and lower classes. Because Fiber required a minimum number of registrations before it could be installed in each neighbourhood, poorer areas did not receive Fiber because they saw the internet as unimportant and irrelevant to their daily lives.

This was part of the motivation to create digital equality in Santiago, Chile (whose GINI index stood at 52.1 in 20092) by providing city-wide access to Fiber, irrespective of economic affluence.

We conducted preliminary studies of Santiago’s economic and social landscape, as well as wealth distribution, before drafting the inclusion of Fiber in 3 stages. This exercise also made us aware of the implications of high-speed internet on work culture and daily lifestyle, which led to the full-scale development of the Google City you see today.

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Screenshot of eligible fiberhoods in Kansas City in 2012.

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‘Google Fiber Splits Along Kansas City’s Digital Divide’, Marcus Wohlsen, July 2012, http://www.wired.com/2012/09/google-fiber-digital-divide/ 2 The World Bank. GINI index measures the extent to which the income distribution among individuals within an economy deviates from perfect equality (index of 0).

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Site analysis of Santiago 65

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Wealth distribution across Santiago 66

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Spread of Fiberhoods in Santiago 67

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Initial development of Google City, Santiago 68

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Visualising the immediate effects of Fiber, ie. vacated office spaces in the city center 69

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Behind the scenes Snapshots of our resident illustrator working hard to bring Google City alive on paper!

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City Like what you see?

Nominate your own city - we’ll be in touch soon.

All designs and future propositions made in this project are not associated in any way with Google, and are deliberate products of architectural design thinking and general admiration for Google.

The visual language of this publication has been intentionally crafted to match Google’s image for authenticity solely for university purposes ie. good grades.

Thank you for your interest in Google City!