Google CEO Larry Page just announced the launch of Sidewalk Labs, an "urban innovation company" that hopes to improve city life through the use of technology. Page says the new company will be "developing and incubating urban technologies to address issues like cost of living, efficient transportation, and energy usage." Sidewalk Labs will be run by Dan Doctoroff, former CEO of Bloomberg LP and the "Deputy Mayor of Economic Development and Rebuilding" for New York City.

There's a website up and running at sidewalkinc.com, which calls for a rethink of how we design cities. "By 2050, the population in cities will double, intensifying existing socioeconomic, public health and environmental problems. At the same time, innovations in technology can be used to design communities that are more efficient, responsive and resilient."

There's also a press release, that says Sidewalk Labs will work on "making transportation more efficient and lowering the cost of living, reducing energy usage and helping government operate more efficiently" and that it will "develop new products, platforms and partnerships to make progress in these areas." The press release calls out "ubiquitous connectivity and sharing, the internet of things, dynamic resource management and flexible buildings and infrastructure" as technologies it thinks can help with city life.

Sidewalk Labs seems to very closely follow the Calico model, Google's healthcare and anti-aging company: 1) find a leader in an up-and-coming-field (Sidewalk has Doctoroff, Calico has Art Levinson), 2) use Google's vast resources to start a spin-off company with said leader as CEO, and 3) have them work on moonshots. Like Calico, Sidewalk Labs is a separate company from Google and isn't part of Google[x] or any other division—we'd imagine Google has a large ownership stake in the new company, though.

Lately Google has been working on some small-scale city-like design itself, with its proposed headquarters redesign. The futuristic concept shows flexible office space that would be reconfigurable via robotic cranes. The building don't have roofs, but are instead all covered by a massive transparent canopy that aims to "blur the distinction between [the] buildings and nature."

It's all very vague, just like the Calico announcement. Page says the company is focused on "making long-term, 10X bets" so don't expect any products (or news of any kind) anytime soon.