Alphabet (formerly Google) is one of the largest technology companies and investors in health in the world and its restructuring was a move to allow Google to expand into domains beyond the search engine.

Alphabet Inc. was created through the restructuring of Google in 2015, becoming the parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries. However, the restructuring was also a move to create a new identity that would support the company's long-term views and improvements regarding anti-trust, "transparency" and "oversight" over its actions.

One of the most exciting things to emerge post-restructuring was the emergence of X (founded by Google in 2010 and formerly Google X) as an independent subsidiary of Alphabet. X is a research and development facility which creates 'moonshot' technologies to solve the world's biggest challenges. X is a diverse group of inventors and innovators who aim to transform billions of people's lives whilst thinking and operating at least a decade into the future at any given time.

In many ways, we consider human-centred design as the solution to cities but could it be fundamental to the crisis facing them today? Could data become a tool from which we build cities rather than a by-product of them? In 2016, The Selfish Ledger - an internal Google concept - leaked to the public presenting how a total data collection tool could reshape society by aligning people with their everyday “interests” and even guide the behaviour of entire populations to solve global problems such as poverty and disease.

Socially-driven technologies are pushing further into the future yet the spaces and places inhabiting them remain comparatively slow to change. Can this be creating a discrepancy between technology and the emergence of new spatial strategies and typologies capable of enabling the technological interactions of tomorrow? 

The work undergone at Google can be ground-breaking, often with a focus on ‘healing’ the world - think project Tidal, an underwater sensing tool for protecting the ocean while feeding humanity sustainably - but much remains a secret and out of the public eye both digitally and spatially. With the dominance of Google and Alphabet's operations so embedded into public life, what does this say about the role of public interest in shaping the cities of the future?