A look at how Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs' bet on making Toronto a smart city failed, driven by intense resistance from residents and civic leaders
Alphabet bet big in Toronto. Toronto didn't play along. — October 2017, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke … Tweets: @dlberes , @ozm , @yeahyeahyasmin , @ozm , @davegershgorn , @longform , @frankpasquale , @joshokane , @kotarski , and @neve_peric . Thanks: @dlberes Tweets: Damon Beres / @dlberes : NEW on @ozm: The definitive history of the rise and fall of Sidewalk Labs' “smart city” concept. It's a high-stakes story of activism—and a fascinating case study in how the public now views certain types of idealism in the tech industry. By @BrianJBarth https://onezero.medium.com/... OneZero / @ozm : Sidewalk Labs bet big on a futuristic “smart city” in Toronto dubbed Quayside, the most ambitious project of its kind in North America. But Toronto didn't play along. https://read.medium.com/LH4JUY4 Yasmin Tayag / @yeahyeahyasmin : “Objections ranged from fears of Orwellian surveillance to Canadians' general skepticism of the American culture of exceptionalism, so perfectly embodied by a Silicon Valley-designed smart city.” In short: Alphabet said ‘sup’ and Toronto said ‘nah, b’ https://onezero.medium.com/... OneZero / @ozm : The demise of the most ambitious smart city project in North America, backed by one of the most powerful corporations on the planet, came at the hands of a small group of Toronto activists — and one disaffected tech billionaire. https://read.medium.com/As9dY49 Dave Gershgorn / @davegershgorn : “Schmidt rose to the lectern and said that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had long opined about ‘all of these things that we could do if someone would just give us a city and put us in charge.’” That didn't happen. https://onezero.medium.com/... @longform : The rise and fall of Quayside, a futuristic city concept that Google tried to build in Toronto: https://long.fm/ZZY3zVm (@brianjbarth @onezero) https://twitter.com/... Frank Pasquale / @frankpasquale : If a company is taking “data & using it to build products & services to then sell back to us, why isn't that intellectual property and the value of that data ours as residents of the city?” https://onezero.medium.com/... Great advocacy & activism by @biancawylie! Josh O'Kane / @joshokane : great summary here of the long and winding collapse of the Sidewalk Labs / Quayside / Waterfront Toronto project, by @BrianJBarth: https://onezero.medium.com/... Kris Kotarski / @kotarski : Fantastic in-depth report by @BrianJBarth on the death of Toronto's Google-backed smart city. It's a great look at urban planning, surveillance capitalism and tech company/wall street/Bloomberg guy hubris. It's published in @ozm. https://onezero.medium.com/... Neve Peric / @neve_peric : “The activism — both at the grassroots level and top-down messaging from Balsillie — was working.” https://onezero.medium.com/... Thanks: @dlberes