Planning Toronto’s waterfront after Sidewalk Labs

While Waterfront Toronto doesn’t seem to be in a big rush, there’s no question a serious debate awaits the agency and its shareholders about Quayside and the Port Lands in the post-Sidewalk Labs era.

Many critics of Alphabet’s smart city gambit called for complete re-set, and the opportunity to do just that has presented itself. The question is, re-set to what?

One of the over-arching concerns about the Sidewalk plan was that it put the technology cart before the policy horse, with the result that the company touted a host of generally untested digital systems as the solution to urban problems large and small. What’s more, these technologies had a generic quality, largely because Sidewalk wanted to market them to cities around the world.

But Waterfront Toronto bears responsibility for this dynamic because it asked bidders in 2017 for innovation-oriented development schemes, as if innovation was the objective, and not just a means to an end.

I’d argue that Waterfront Toronto needs to articulate a more compelling set of goals, and then let decisions about development and technology follow. For an instructive model, the agency should look to the Netherlands, and cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam, to see how one country arrived at a broad consensus about future urban development and then deployed various tools, among them smart city technology, to transform vision into reality.

Unsurprisingly, the Netherlands is focused intensively on climate change and rising sea levels. In interviews with Dutch officials, I was told several times the main concern facing major port cities is that water comes in from above and below, and from the ocean to the west and the rivers to the east.

The Netherlands has a long history of building dike and canal infrastructure. But in recent years, the national government and nine major municipalities have signed so-called “city deals” meant to advance mutual policy goals, such as promoting the circular economy and climate adaptation.

Not all this work involves digital tech. Researchers with the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solution, an innovative academic-municipal-private sector joint venture, are testing methods for extracting fibre from sanitary sewage (i.e., toilet paper) and using one chemical component as a binding agent in asphalt instead of tar. The application is about reducing carbon and getting more, literally, from waste water treatment systems.

In Rotterdam, meanwhile, the city is working with property owners on a “blue roof ” network, using highly sensitive weather radar data to activate rooftop reservoir drainage systems tied into storm sewers. A water collection reservoir integrated into a green roof design assists with insulation. But by programming blue roofs to automatically drain in advance of stormy weather, the technology eases pressure on overtaxed municipal storm water pipes.

It would be wrong to suggest Waterfront Toronto’s plans aren’t animated by broader goals. The agency’s development strategy has always involved principles like the creation of better public spaces and more affordable housing. As for climate, the re-routing of the mouth of the Don River and the construction of a giant flood protection berm is all about preparing for Hurricane Hazel-type storms.

The Sidewalk drama, however, revealed that the agency was willing to let a private firm commandeer the policy agenda, ostensibly in the name of innovation. Looking ahead, Waterfront Toronto should take a page from the Dutch play book, establishing high level principles for future investment, ensuring extensive public engagement and assessing proposals according to pre-set criteria.

This isn’t rocket science. There are, for example, enormous synergies between affordable housing and energy efficient architecture. Waterfront Toronto could set out investment principles that invite a wide range of design ideas and technologies that advance both goals simultaneously in all projects – in effect, transforming the lakefront precincts into a showcase for green building design.

Or the agency, and the public, can identify other principles to drive future investment. The point is, we should steer that process instead of retreating to the more nebulous rhetoric of innovation qua innovation.

Once the city and the agency gets the sequence right, as has been the case in the Netherlands, the rest will follow, both more predictably and less contentiously.