Openness is best way forward
When Alphabet, Google’s parent company, picked Toronto to unleash its vision of a technology-driven neighbourhood there was a wave of excitement about all the intriguing possibilities.
And, as these things typically go, that was quickly followed by a torrent of concern about whether Waterfront Toronto, the public agency responsible for waterfront development, was preparing to simply hand over a chunk of the city to a global tech giant to treat as its own personal development playground. To be sure, some of that recoil was fairly earned, as Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto kept far too much from the public early on.
Secrecy fed fears about how much of Toronto’s eastern waterfront was truly up for grabs and what a neighbourhood full of cameras, sensors and smartphone apps meant for residents. What data would be collected, what would be done with it and who would own it?
The high-profile resignations of a Waterfront board member this past summer and a member of the digital strategy advisory panel last week has kept those concerns front and centre.
But it’s also instructive to note that there is still no actual deal here to judge on its merits. Waterfront Toronto has not signed over the right to develop land and if it does get that far, the public agency has already stated that it will retain ownership. And, crucially, it has not signed an agreement about how data would be handled.
For now, all Sidewalk Labs has the right to do is create a proposal for a neighbourhood on the 12-acre Quayside site near Queens Quay E. and Parliament St.
Waterfront board chair Helen Burstyn is well aware of the concerns around data and privacy and says there are still many questions to be asked — and answered. “And we shouldn’t sign off on anything until we know exactly what it is that we get and how we represent the interests and the betterment of Toronto,” she says.
More than that, the agreement on data rights, if things get that far, should be publicly scrutinized before the agency signs off on it.
Google’s primary purpose is to monetize data. It has been caught tracking users’ movements even when it has explicitly been told not to, and this week it was exposed for covering up a data breach with its social networking site.
Given all this, concerns that a tripartite government waterfront agency might not be up to the task of pushing back against one of the most valuable corporations on the planet will linger. Being open with the public is the best remedy for that.
Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto both need to do a far better job of explaining how big data will improve the lives of citizens and residents — not just the corporate bottom line — and how they’ll be held accountable for how the information is gathered, used and shared.
And let’s also not forget that to have real value, the Quayside development needs to be more than a techno-experiment; it must be an interesting, liveable community with housing for a range of incomes. If it can’t do that, it should be rejected long before the data plan is determined.
Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto both need to do a far better job of explaining how big data will improve the lives of citizens and residents