National Post (National Edition)
Sidewalk Labs ramps up charm offensive for HQ
‘Smart city’ ideas to be on display at Toronto site
TORONTO • Sidewalk Labs on Saturday afternoon will throw open the doors on an old fish plant in east Toronto to show people the “smart city” ideas it is developing for the Quayside neighbourhood.
The building — dubbed “307” since it’s at 307 Lakeshore Blvd. East — is the latest community outreach effort by the Google Llcaffiliated urban developer, which aspires to transform a swath of the Toronto waterfront into a high-tech pocket of urbanism, replete with autonomous cars, robots and sensors that promise to improve city living in all sorts of little ways.
But Sidewalk Labs has faced escalating skepticism during a series of public consultation sessions about the project, as critics worry about how the company will use the data it will collect and complain about a lack of transparency.
By opening 307, Sidewalk Labs is ramping up the charm offensive in an effort to build a social licence for the eventual development. There will be art, talks and a “modular pavement” demonstration that lets streets transform to give extra space to pedestrians during certain times.
“We are not just building a condo building,” said Lauren Skelly, a Sidewalk Labs spokesperson. “The conversations that are happening around us are great, and, you know, the truth is we don’t necessarily have all the answers yet, because what we are proposing has not been done before.”
The building will be open to the public every weekend during the summer, with planned public talks, urban development prototype demonstrations, a community market built using old shipping containers and a vegetable garden in the parking lot.
But Bianca Wylie, an open government advocate and co-founder of advocacy group Tech Reset Canada, is not particularly interested in the outreach efforts.
Wylie said people can’t have a serious discussion about something if they don’t have at least some specifics and the Sidewalk Labs development plan is still extremely vague.
“How do you have a consultation when people aren’t even informed?” she said. “What we need to understand is: What is this deal? And that’s where any social licence can be attained. All this other stuff is noise.”
Wylie said there’s a severe shortage of concrete statements by Sidewalk Labs. Instead, it just talks vaguely about making life better for Toronto residents.
“You don’t get to come into someone’s city and say, ‘We’re going to make life better for you, trust us,’” she said. “What some people might think is better might be quite dystopian for others, right?”
A lot of the discussion around the Toronto project has focused on data collection and privacy. Sidewalk Labs officials insist no data of any kind will be collected at the 307 opening event.
Sheldon Levy, chief executive of Next Canada, a Toronto-based non-profit tech incubator, said he’s met with Sidewalk Labs and he’s convinced the best way for it to allay concerns is to simply design technology systems to deliver services without collecting data at all.
“The data systems that we have, have got to be audited as not collecting personal information, as opposed to collecting it and then saying, what are the rules around it?” he said.
Levy added that Sidewalk Labs may be a lightning rod for criticism, but the broader issues of data privacy and how to manage new technology is something the government should be taking the lead on.
“Sidewalk Labs is trying to figure out what works. I don’t think they are with bad intent at all,” he said. “The people I’ve met are fine individuals, but I think they just arrived at a time when we as Canadians haven’t figured it out.”
Skelly said Sidewalk Labs is committed to only use any data collected to improve the lives of people in the neighbourhood, and it has published a “responsible data use framework” that lays out principles and privacy considerations for the project.
She also said the company does not know how it’s going to make money off the venture, but because it’s owned by Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, making money isn’t something it needs to worry about right now.
“We are very fortunate to be an Alphabet company, so that allows us to be very mission-driven, and our mission is to improve urban life, and do it in major ways," Skelly said. "And we believe if we do that, we will find opportunities to make money."