Article
Planning on the Waterfront: Setting the Agenda for Toronto’s ‘smart city’ Project
Planning Theory & Practice
(2019)
Abstract
A startling announcement came on a crisp, fall day in 2017: Sidewalk Labs, a sister company of Google, was awarded a contract to create a ‘smart city’ along a small stretch of Toronto’s largely contaminated waterfront. Waterfront Toronto, a corporation created and governed by three levels of government to plan the city’s vast, waterfront area, normally engaged the public to gather their input on all external contracts. Questions quickly poured in as to how Sidewalk Labs would be governed, given data privacy and other concerns given the company’s connection to Google. New questions have arisen since the CEO of Sidewalk Labs, Dan Doctoroff, started to talk about planning transit and taking a share of future city tax revenues. Since the announcement, Sidewalk Labs has produced reams of pretty pictures and countless descriptions of gadgets and architectural features, available on its website (Sidewalk Labs 2019a, Rider 2018). But, almost two years later, there remain significant questions about exactly what Sidewalk has planned, what stretch of the waterfront the plan involves, how the so-called smart city will be financed, whether Sidewalk Labs imagines itself as an authorized urban planner, and who will hold both Sidewalk Labs and its public sector partner, Waterfront Toronto (WT), accountable.
Keywords
- smart cities,
- urban governance,
- sidewalk labs
Disciplines
Publication Date
2019
Citation Information
Alexandra Flynn and Mariana Valverde. "Planning on the Waterfront: Setting the Agenda for Toronto’s ‘smart city’ Project" Planning Theory & Practice (2019) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/alexandra-flynn/12/