Sidewalk Labs project is a public health opportunity
In 1854, British physician John Snow mapped a devastating cholera outbreak to a water hand-pump on London’s Broad St. He tore the handle off the pump, curbing the outbreak and establishing himself as a father of modern public health. Snow used data to figure out an epidemic, and then committed an act of water pump sabotage to make the crisis stop. He didn’t have authorization to disable the pump. Snow was a public health data whiz, but he was equally a vandal.
Less than 200 years later, Toronto doesn’t have a cholera problem, but we do have some serious health problems. Toronto water is clean, but 21st-century health crises still flow through bad housing and food insecurity, poverty, transit and recreation deserts, and the urban effects of climate change. From mental health and addictions problems to chronic diseases like diabetes and obesity, contemporary epidemics are built into the way we under-design and misdesign our communities and create inadequate social policy. To create healthier communities, we need to urgently rethink how we build, design and live in those communities.
Now, with a nearly $2-billion investment, Google’s Sidewalk Labs is handing Toronto the extraordinary test-bed opportunity to lead the world in rethinking and redesigning our cities to include unprecedented data linkages and analytical capacity.
Sidewalk Labs’ well-intentioned but vocal critics are focused on privacy, data security and the role of private dollars in municipal infrastructure development — all important stuff. But I haven’t seen a single discussion about the Sidewalk Labs development as a community health pilot project.
Data from the Toronto Sidewalk Labs precinct could have a seismic impact on community health — an impact as great as any other public health discovery since Dr. Snow and the choleric pump. This is an impact and opportunity that existing government and public health agencies are ill-equipped or even structurally unable to deliver.
What could these data do for health, not just in Toronto, but eventually all around the urban world? With properly and fully connected data, we could finally do proper epidemiology and population health. Even the most basic data linkages between health measures and other systems are nearly impossible in today’s cities. Sidewalk Labs is creating the infrastructure that will be able to link community and anonymized individual health data with other systems — transit, food, waste, housing, people movement, you name it. These are the core analyses that can make healthier, more equitable communities possible.
Great epidemiological data and the ability to use it in urban and community design might be as important to our future health as clean water was in the 19th century. I believe that creating this kind of data capacity in Toronto and Canada is actually the most exciting and most beneficial aspect of the Sidewalk Labs concept. This is a Lab for healthy communities.
Back in 1854, an audacious scientist walked out into the street and vandalized a London water pump. An awful epidemic subsided, but there is more to the story. After the epidemic, government officials stepped forward to criticize Dr. Snow’s methods — and replaced the pump handle. It took years for his discoveries and methods to get the credit they deserved. Now, we celebrate Dr. Snow’s determined use of data, inspired sense of civic duty, and powerful disruption. Dismissing Sidewalk Labs because we are concerned about data security is like dismissing Dr. Snow because he didn’t have a permit to vandalize the Broad St. pump.
Dr. Snow charged forward where the authorities and knowledge gaps were failing his community. As Torontonians, Ontarians and Canadians, we should step into the future bravely and boldly, and work with Sidewalk Labs to do the same. We can and must address data ownership and security concerns, but the Sidewalk Labs opportunity is too important to allow those concerns to defeat it.
Google’s Sidewalk Labs is handing Toronto the extraordinary test-bed opportunity to lead the world in rethinking and redesigning our cities