From the Centre for Free Expression at Ryerson University:
Mystery on the Waterfront: How the "Smart City" Allure Led a Major Public Agency in Toronto Into a Reckless Deal with Big Tech
Once upon a time, Waterfront Toronto (WT) was a high-profile public agency that had largely succeeded in combining enthusiastic support for upscale waterfront condos with a progressive civic agenda – no mean feat in an age of increasing political polarization and urban inequality. For example, zoning bylaws for waterfront developments, put in place before any condo building be designed, require at least 20% of affordable housing. WT also imposed high design standards on buildings and public spaces. And they came up with clever legal innovations furthering the public interest, such as crafting building height limits in contracts with developers, so developers could not go over the city’s head to the provincial Ontario Municipal Board and get approval for more height, as is often the case elsewhere in urban Ontario. WT was also a pioneer in public community consultations.HT: FT Alphaville's Further Reading post.
The agency reached its peak of public support eight years ago, when then city councillor Doug Ford (now premier of Ontario) famously derided the nicely designed and very popular Sugar Beach, and mused about putting a casino and a ferris wheel on the waterfront instead – a suggestion that was probably an Trumpian off-the-cuff opinion rather than an alternative plan, but which had the counterproductive (for the Ford agenda) effect of mobilizing hundreds of local citizens to defend the existing WT plan for the waterfront. In contrast to many arms-length public authorities and agencies, including the storied New York Port Authority, Waterfront Toronto was frequently praised for its rich approach to public space and community engagement.
It was thus quite surprising to local civic activists when WT announced, in the fall of 2017, that it was entering into an unspecified relationship with Sidewalk Labs, a sister company of Google, and persistently refused to disclose the agreement. WT let all the public engagements sessions run in 2017 and 2018 to be run by Sidewalk Labs and avoided difficult questions from the concerned public.
City officials, including councillors, were absent from these large meetings, again highly unusual in the local context. City councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, the sole public official on the WT board, had seen the secret agreement, and he told his fellow councillors, at a meeting of council’s executive committee in January of 2018, that “I know enough about the agreement that I think you would like to know more about the agreement [before you approve anything].” In the end the committee, instead of endorsing the plan and sending it to full council for approval, decided to hold the item in limbo during the long municipal election campaign that ended on October 22.
From the first announcement in October 2017, a wide range of people have expressed dismay about the apparent willingness of WT to hand over a chunk of our city to a large, private US corporation. In addition, many people complained that there was no reason at all to keep the initial agreement secret, since there was no definite project and hence no possible commercial secrecy.
After poring over WT documents and interviewing half a dozen key informants, it is clear to us that the vague-sounding deal struck with a Google-affiliated company was part of a larger change taking place at WT. Around 2014-15, the public interest focus of the organization shifted, begging the question: is WT representing the public interest along the waterfront?
WATERFRONT 2.0 AND THE ENTREPRENEURIALIZATION OF A PUBLIC AGENCY
The genesis of what would later become WT was a bid for the Olympics. While the bid for the 2008 Olympics lost, the three governments created a task force, headed by Bay street financier Robert Fung, whichrecommended the creation of a joint federal, provincial, and municipal entity modelled on waterfront development agencies in London and New York. WT became a catalyst for the development Toronto’s mostly industrial waterfront but was given a limited mandate and a limited time frame. WT is a provincial corporation with significant limits to its powers. The federal, provincial and municipal governments are equal, non-equity share partners of WT. It is prevented from borrowing money on its own (a power enjoyed by many other public corporations) or using its assets as collateral. It also lacks the power to create subsidiaries – a power that Sidewalk Labs, as a regular corporation based in the United States, is regularly using in its Toronto ventures.
All three levels of government must approve each project, separately, and must approve each disbursement of government grant money even when the overall funding package had been previously approved.
In short, WT is not equipped to pursue entrepreneurial projects, very much in contrast to what is widely regarded as the mother of all arms-length public corporations, the Port Authority of New York. Governments have WT on a very short leash, even though the same governments justified the formation of the agency by claiming that private sector expertise and methods would greatly accelerate and improve waterfront revitalization. Expecting an agency to be nimble and entrepreneurial but giving it little financial and legal autonomy was perhaps a recipe for trouble.
WT’s 2014-2023 Strategic Business plan, setting out the entity’s long-term plan, may help to explain the decision made by its board in 2017 to walk blindly into an undefined partnership with one of the world’s savviest and wealthiest companies. That 2014 plan tackled head-on the existential crisis (one rarely mentioned in routine communications): the agency had been legislatively set up to have a limited 20-year lifespan, with the potential for a 5-year extension. The hefty government contributions that had fed it since its inception were supposed to be drying up around 2019-20.,,,MORE
Previously (no obsession here, no sir):
The City of the Future Is a Data-Collection Machine (sensors; IoT; data centers etc)
Sidewalk Labs Toronto Update: "Google’s smart city dream is turning into a privacy nightmare"
"Are New York’s Free LinkNYC Internet Kiosks Tracking Your Movements?" (GOOG)
Good ideas gone whack-job.
Or, as a hard-bitten, some might say cynical, journo once wrote:
"The Urge to Save Humanity is Almost Always
Only a False-Face for the Urge to Rule It"
—H.L. Mencken*
"Google Strategy Teardown: Google Is Turning Itself Into An AI Company As It Seeks To Win New Markets Like Cloud And Transportation" (GOOG)
And many more. Use the 'search blog' box if interested
Okay, bowing to popular demand, one more:
There Is Something Weird Going On With Google's Sidewalk Labs Project In Toronto (GOOG)
We've been posting on 'smart' cities' in general and Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs in particular for a bit over three years, with quite a few of the stories (see after the jumps) being techno-dystopia stuff.
Here's another, but more important are the links immediately following....
