Google affiliate Sidewalk Lab's proposed tech-heavy development of Toronto's Quayside area has been talked about for some years now, and most people still don't really have a clue about the practical implications of the project. Now, the company has issued a glossy four-volume 1,524-page development plan and, guess what, most people still don't really understand most of the practical implications of the project.
The tome waxes lyrical about small details like robotic trash cans, automated rotating rain-shields, self-driven small package delivery, adaptive traffic lights and speed limits, and dynamic configurable road widths. But it is still far from clear how Sidewalk Labs intends to use all the data it proposes to collect from residents and users, how it intends to get over the fact that the "mass timber" high-rise buildings it proposes are not currently legal in Canada, and how the plan is actually going to help housing affordability in Toronto as it claims (it uses a very different, and much broader, definition of "affordable" than the City of Toronto does). Indeed, the Master Innovation and Development Plan raises almost as many questions as it answers.
The planned development was originally to cover a relatively modest area of 12 acres in Quayside in Toronto's underutilized and undeveloped old portlands area, near the mouth of the Don River. But the report says that it is now to include the western half of Villiers Island as well, and it also raises the prospect of the partial development of a much larger area around it, as it now says it will need a much larger parcel of land (up to 190 acres, which Sidewalk Labs cutely refers to as the Innovative Development and Economic Acceleration district, or IDEA) in order to fully implement all the innovations and sensor-testing technology it proposes, land that I had understood was already part of the city's plan for the naturalization and flood-proofing of the Don estuary. Some of the land in question is owned by Waterfront Toronto, the intergovernmental body that is tasked with dealing with Sidewalk Labs and making the final decision, but some of it is owned directly by the City of Toronto, which complicates matters somewhat.
The proposal would also require substantial regulatory and legal changes at the municipal and provincial level, including amendments to the City of Toronto Act and the Ontario Highway Traffic Act. It would require new public transit (light rail), for which Sidewalk Labs graciously offers between $100 million and $400 million in loans towards the $1.2 billion total cost. Sidewalk Labs is offering the city a 10% share of profits from any new technologies it develops there over 10 years (if any), but it also calls for vaguely-defined "performance payments" from the city in return. Who knows what this will mean in practice? Indeed, the entire price tag for the project - and who would be responsible for what - remains worryingly undefined ("subject to future negotiations"). Make no mistake: Sidewalk Labs and it's parent, Alphabet Inc, are in this to make a profit (the development plan admits as much), not just to further its R&D, and definitely not for the social and economic welfare of the people of Toronto.
Now, I am not a technophobe - I have solar panels and a Prius and any number of apps on my cellphone - but I don't believe in adopting technologies willy-nilly, just because they are there (see my piece on 5G phone technology). We don't want to go selling our municipal soul for the promise of robotic trash cans, or even for some ill-defined possible boon to be acquired from a reputation as a tech-forward city (I don't drink Richard Florida's Cool-Aid, when he claims that the Sidewalk Labs project would automatically vault Toronto to the top of the urban tech charts, and that huge economic benefits will necessarily follow; I think it is Alphabet Inc. that will benefit and Toronto may pick up a few crumbs along the way).
I also believe that urban planning is the province of elected city officials and city departments established for that very purpose, not some faceless mega-corporation whose goals and ambitions may be a long way from those of the city and its residents. That sounds to me like the thin end of the wedge, the start of the slippery slope towards a dystopian future where we are all just pawns in a world of corporate powerplays. Hyperbole? Maybe. People may accuse me of not having enough "vision" (that is the usual come-back), but I'd prefer that to being considered recklessly speculative. What's so "smart" about that?
In a pro-Sidewalk Labs article, Globe reporter Marcus Gee complains that, "In the jaded eyes of its opponents, Sidewalk is a free-booting tech giant that threatens to steal our personal data, gobble up our most precious real estate and supersede our elected governments, making itself lord and master of the waterfront". Well, yes, that just about sums it up, and Mr. Gee does not provide much evidence or argument to refute that characterization of the project.
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