Toronto smart-city waterfront plan shelved

TORONTO — An ambitious plan for a high-tech neighbourhood on Toronto’s waterfront has been shelved after Google affiliate Sidewalk Labs walked away from the project because of “unprecedented economic uncertainty.”

Sidewalk Labs said Thursday it is abandoning its smart-city plans that had envisioned a stateof-the-art neighbourhood on a derelict parcel of land and drawn the ire of those concerned with the privacy implications of living or moving through an area under constant surveillance.

“As unprecedented economic uncertainty has set in around the world and in the Toronto real estate market, it has become too difficult to make the 12-acre project financially viable without sacrificing core parts of the plan we had developed,” Sidewalk CEO Dan Doctoroff said in a statement.

Doctoroff had informed Waterfront Toronto, a tripartite agency in the process of deciding whether to allow Sidewalk to pursue the plan, on Wednesday.

“While this is not the outcome we had hoped for, Waterfront Toronto offers thanks to Sidewalk Labs for its vision, effort, and the many commitments that both the company and its employees have made to the future of Toronto,” Waterfront chairman Stephen Diamond said in a statement.

Sidewalk won the right from Waterfront in 2017 to develop a proposal for the swath of lakefront land, dubbed Quayside, in an underdeveloped corner of the city.

Critics complained about a U.S. company getting its hands on prime land that could be developed by homegrown enterprises. They also worried about what would happen with data collected from a myriad of sensors and devices throughout the neighbourhood.