Google Wants to Improve City Life With Sidewalk Labs

— -- Google's latest moonshot is aiming to find a technological solution for the problems faced by city dwellers -- among them, traffic congestion, pollution and exorbitant housing costs.

The new venture, called Sidewalk Labs, was announced by Google chief executive Larry Page in a Google+ post where he talked about Google's "long-term bet" on future innovation that could help change cities for the better.

"While this is a relatively modest investment and very different from Google's core business, it's an area where I hope we can really improve people’s lives," Page wrote in the post on Wednesday night.

Page said some progress has been made in marrying technology and city life, including dashboards that visualize traffic patterns and tools that let residents give feedback on municipal services. However, he sees plenty of areas for Sidewalk Labs to tackle.

"A lot of urban challenges are interrelated -- for example, availability of transportation affects where people choose to live, which affects housing prices, which affects quality of life," Page wrote. "So it helps to start from first principles and get a big-picture view of the many factors that affect city life. Then, you can develop the technologies and partnerships you need to make a difference."

Sidewalk Labs will be based in New York City and run by former deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff.

Page did not reveal how much money Google is investing in the venture but compared it to Google X, the company's big ideas laboratory, which has focused on ambitious projects, including self-driving cars and Internet beaming balloons.

"As more and more people around the world live, work and settle in cities, the opportunities for improving our urban environments are endless," he wrote. "Now it’s time to hit the streets and get to work!"