
Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto - colinprince
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52572362
======
drusepth
I know there's gonna be a lot of people here that are happy about this for
various reasons (anti-Google, anti-"smart cities", etc), but this is really
disappointing for me.

It's true that the concept of "cities" (or even just "gatherings of people")
predates the Internet by thousands of years, and that cities themselves
haven't adapted much to the Internet and what it enables in the 40ish years
it's been around. This project was inspiring because it embraced what's
possible in a new way and enabled many new possibilities that wouldn't
otherwise be possible in the typical piecemeal upgrades a city typically sees
over time (especially in terms of construction guidelines and sustainability).
People hated on Sidewalk Labs since its very inception, but I guess they bit
off too much area and got shut down by the locals (and, I guess, covid-19 made
a handy exit strategy).

Hopefully the next EPCOT equivalent will either be a new city that attracts
the kind of people who would want to live there, or at least find a city that
would be happy to host their "experiments".

FWIW I previously worked at a "smart cities" company that I won't besmirch,
but I will say I would rather see a more well-known (and IMO trustworthy)
company that has more experience managing and securing data at scale than
them. In experimental projects like these, it just takes one "city's data
leaks" headline and the whole market chills.

~~~
Barrin92
The entire idea of a "smart city" is pure anathema to how vibrant cities
function. It's a technocratic wet dream, the digital version of Robert Moses
and Corbusier making a comeback. The people preoccupied with this should read
some Alain Bertaud and learn how markets work and then go do more productive
things with their time than trying to micromanage cities.

~~~
ccktlmazeltov
I don't see how, I would say most of the decisions that were made in the US
are. Cities in the US are not "vibrant" compared to Europe.

I think cars are mostly to blame, roads are so large, no pedestrian-only
streets, parkings take so much space, etc.

~~~
systemvoltage
I actually prefer the vastness of space in the US. Just go out in the American
country side and there is so much beauty. I would love to see a world where
the idea of a city is obsolete, distributed local communities of 2000 people
spread across the span of American wilderness. Basic services such as
electricity, sewage and internet are all maintained by standards set by the
state authorities, but run by locals. It all sounds too hipster, but it is
not. This COVID-19 pandemic has taught us a lot about how we can survive as a
distributed species as compared to dense city life.

Europe has no such luxury due to the density of people cramped in tight
corridors and old (but beautiful) architecture. There it makes sense to have a
well organized city life.

IMO city life is overrated but that's just my opinion/perspective of society.

~~~
skizziepop
You've invented small towns. What prevents you from moving to one post-
pandemic?

------
neom
4 years ago I co-founded a smart cities business. Basically a wysiwyg
schema/api generator for non-technical municipal users. Idea being if you're
procuring data generative "stuff" \- municipal workers can define an
integration point. In the first few months of starting the company, I met with
sidewalk labs at their request. We talked about working together and I said
that wouldn't be possible because we wanted to give a data tool to cities that
was vendor agnostic. They asked me what would happen if we met in a city, I
told them they would probably integrate with our platform so the city could
have cross correlation of data with other vendors, they told me it was more
likely they would make sure we wouldn't exist.

~~~
jacquesm
The hubris of Google is just incredible. Half-baked commitments and then to
tell someone who is actually dedicated to the mission that they will run them
into the ground. It's really nasty. I've seen the same behavior from the first
CEO of 'Spotlife', exactly the same tone of voice, exactly the same ending.

~~~
KerryJones
I think it's important to remember that Google is made up of people, as are
their sub-companies. I would argue that you get any large group and at some
point you get people making stupid, hateful, & hurtful comments. It is equally
important to look at whether the organization as a whole is to blame or just
pieces of it, and can pieces of it be addressed.

~~~
jacquesm
I think it is equally important to remember that those people were hired by
other people who ultimately were hired by the people at the very top who set
an example for the corporate culture they want to create. Companies being made
up of people is no excuse for them doing these incredibly dumb, stupid and
toxic things. That's what policies, mission statements and guidelines are for.

~~~
KerryJones
> Companies being made up of people is no excuse for them doing these
> incredibly dumb, stupid and toxic things. I never said it was -- I didn't
> defend anything about the actions themselves, but a lot of people were
> blaming "Google" as being awful, which is generalizing a local problem.

> That's what policies, mission statements and guidelines are for. Yes... but
> these obviously don't apply everywhere. That's like saying "that's what laws
> are for" then being confused that criminals exist.

> people were hired by other people who ultimately were hired by the people at
> the very top who set an example for the corporate culture they want to
> create Yes... and again, Google is rated by most agencies and people as
> having one of the best cultures out-there. This is not the end-all be-all
> predictive measure. Taking a hyperbolic example, one could imagine a world
> where Gandhi ended up recruiting someone who incited violence. You know, the
> whole Christian-crusades thing might be another example.

While you start off the sentence with an implicit agreement with mine ("I
think it's equally important") you then go on to directly oppose it with
views. It's not "equally important", you can't hold both side by side (not
saying one or the other is more correct).

It's not hard to make an argument that Google has done _the best_ at keeping
their "do no evil" culture at scale than any other company of their size (or
even half their size). My point is the opposite of yours, which is you cannot
control at a certain point, just as cells in your body do not replicate
perfectly and produce mutations -- studies have shown that you only get around
13% of an accurate look at someone in the normal interview process, mistakes
are bound to happen. People change for other reasons too, their are external
pressures. No matter how perfect your values are, you will end up with people
doing stupid shit.

* Not condoning any of the actions of Sidewalk Labs.

~~~
hitekker
I think the point of the GP, using your metaphor, is that a company's leaders
have to identify and excise cancer early and often, lest it metastasize across
the organization.

------
owenwil
I know the average Torontonian wasn't into this, but I live nearby and was
really excited about what it could have been, even though it was fraught with
missteps.

This area is a concrete wasteland–just car-parks and abandoned lots–that's now
going to be portioned off to more giant, glass condo buildings, and while
Sidewalk's proposal had problems, it was focused on building something very
different, community-oriented, without prioritizing roads.

Sidewalk really pushed the technology angle way too hard, and it was a clear
overstep– most of it wasn't necessary for any sort of quality of life
improvements, but many of the ideas like wooden 'skyscrapers' and de-
prioritizing roads were exciting, now lost.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You can still advocate for such urban redevelopment and community planning
without Big Tech behind it.

~~~
tyre
You can but change is measured in decades and even then often doesn't happen.

Starting "fresh" with a single leading implementer is really how it needs to
be done.

Take San Francisco. There's the planning board, the planning department,
environmental lawsuits, HOAs, abusing "historic landmarks" designations,
political showmanship, developers, affordable housing, community meetings,
unions, community groups (the cycling people are borderline militant) etc.
etc.

All of those can bring any change to its knees. And they have, repeatedly.
There are good parts of this process and people shouldn't not have input, but
I might not oppose a dictator coming in for two years and just having at it.

~~~
gamblor956
San Francisco has changed immensely in just the last decade.

It may not be noticeable if you live there because you only see the
incremental day by day changes, but as someone who only sporadically visits
the Bay Area: it's nothing like it was in 2010. It's significantly more built
up (and out), more skyscrapers, more apartments, more condos, more everything.

~~~
asdff
Housing prices would tell you there is actually less of everything,
relatively. Demand has surged, sufficient supply has yet to be constructed,
queue housing crisis. Not enough housing is being built in California's
cities.

~~~
nickv
14 new residential high rises were built in SoMA in the past 5 years. 3 more
are going up as we speak and opening in the next few months. That's a LOT of
residential construction in a very short amount of time.

(Mind you that's just a 15 block area in East Cut/SoMA - I'm not even talking
about ALL of Mission Bay which didn't exist 10 years ago or the Van Ness
corridor or Mid-Market.)

The problem here is we only started building about 10 years ago (with One
Rincon being the first major new building in a long time) and the rest of the
Bay Area (for example, Brisbane notoriously) is nowhere near doing its fair
share of building.

~~~
kapuasuite
How does the number of new units stack up to what was being built in the 60s,
50s, 40s, 30s, etc.?

------
supernova87a
Google doesn't need to invest in the gadgets and electronics in the walls that
_appear_ to make cities smarter.

That money would be better spent on enabling city governments, elected
policymakers, and especially their constituents _to be smarter and able to
make better choices and designs about city planning, building permits,
incentives, taxation, traffic, etc_ better.

The rest will follow. What we need is for people to understand how to choose
better for themselves. Not a technology patch.

~~~
asdff
What do you do when city council members profit off of the status quo? It's
not that they are poorly informed, they are well aware of what they are doing
and choose to ignore expert advice on city planning decisions. This is the
frustration I have with my local government in LA. Most people who live in my
city are renters, but most voters in local elections are homeowners so their
voice is heard above all else, and council members are landlords or have
multiple investment properties. When plans come up for building more density
around transit, they overtly say 'this disrupts my view' but really mean 'this
will limit the tax-free exponential growth I've enjoyed on my property
values.' It's so frustrating, and I'm not sure how it can possibly be changed.

~~~
triceratops
> Most people who live in my city are renters, but most voters in local
> elections are homeowners

Sounds like renters should start voting. Why would city council members do
anything for the interests of people that don't vote? Not only is it against
their own self-interest, it's anti-democratic. Elected representatives _have_
to do what their voters want - it's the bedrock of democracy.

That reps are profiting off the system is a side-effect, not the root cause.

~~~
asdff
I rent, I vote. Plenty of people do vote. But, a typical homeowner in LA is
more well off and therefore has more free time to wait in line to vote, so
that is who is most likely to vote. There are people here who need to work
60-80 hour weeks to survive.

~~~
triceratops
> has more free time to wait in line to vote

Lobby for vote-by-mail, early voting, and holidays on election day. I'm sorry,
but that's the only way. Hard problems don't have easy solutions. You can't
expect any council member to go against their voters' wishes on any issue.
Local elections are personal and people who vote in them follow the issues
closely. A council member who listens to "expert advice" rather their voters
will be voted out or recalled, and the next person would simply vote to put
things back the way they were.

If you want lasting change, you have to broaden the electorate and educate
them on the issues.

~~~
asdff
Fundamentally, its a cultural issue we have in this country that is somewhat
disgusting. Politicians should not be just listening to their voters, or their
backers, they should be listening to all their constituents, everyone who
lives in the areas they represent, with particular focus to the most
vulnerable and not the other way around as what frequently happens. The
incentives are completely backward. The interests of those that play the
politick game well are prioritized at the cost of the people who need the most
assistance from public government.

I'm very supportive of expanded voting and recently LA has made election day
into an entire week that you can stroll in and cast your vote (Of course,
everyone waited until the last minute and polls wrapped around the block at
the very last day you could cast your ballot, but that is beside the point).

Even with vote by mail or other initiatives to get out the vote, this leaves a
lot of people without representation in LA. There is the requirement that you
have the time to study the issues and become an informed voter, which is a
privilege not enjoyed by everyone. There are also a lot of undocumented people
paying rent and working jobs in LA. I think these people who are contributing
to the local economy should also be represented by the people in charge of the
area in which they live their life. They have just as much right to be here as
I or any other citizen does.

I think the best way to overcome petty politicking would be to limit the
control elected officials have over what should be logical and factually
rooted decision making. In LA, council members are more powerful in their
district than the mayor or any other elected official, they have absolute
control over what gets built be it on parcels of land or even paint on the
roads. Just look at the patchyness of the bike lane network to see this effect
in action; metro has money earmarked and is ready to build but local council
members just refuse to allow it to happen in their district. They operate as
little feudal lords who award contracts to friends and deny contracts if some
who holds their ear takes issue for whatever reason at all.

Urban planning decisions should not be controlled by politicians, they should
be controlled by urban planners who are highly trained civil engineers from
the best engineering schools hired to do an apolitical job. They understand
these issues better than anyone else in government, and their decisionmaking
is rooted in the cutting edge theories and ideas present in their field,
profit and personal preference be damned.

This is how public government should be run, deferring decision making to
informed experts rather than the wills and wishes of those who command the
most influence over their representative.

------
nick_
Good. Toronto doesn't need condo neighbourhoods with gimmicky smart-phone
integrations. It needs re-zoning of low density neighbourhoods to allow medium
density to be built, thus more uniformly distributing the large and growing
population.

~~~
cactus2093
But... condo neighborhoods are exactly that medium density housing. Every city
does need more condos in their existing neighborhoods if populations are able
to grow. (Unless Covid-19 will reshape the trajectory of urbanization, and
major cities will mostly shrink for the next several decades. That actually
seems somewhat plausible).

But writing off all the sidewalk labs ideas as gimmicky smartphone
integrations is pretty disingenuous. There were ideas for greener construction
methods using more timber and less concrete, more space optimized for walking
and biking instead of cars, interesting communal space arrangements to make
spaces that can be heated in winter and converted to outdoor space when the
weather is nice. There will always be some haters, but IMO all of these things
would be amazing quality of life improvements in the majority of North
American cities.

~~~
sudosysgen
Condos are too expensive in general to fulfill the needs of most cities. In
general construction of new condos is focused on the luxury kind of condos
Google was undoubtedly looking at, which are absolutely not what cities need
right now. We need affordable housing.

~~~
briffle
Building Luxury condos does create affordable housing. Where do you think
those people move from? interesting thought from this link: If you destroy
10,000 luxury condo's in Toronto tomorrow, will your prices go down?

[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/1/how-luxury-
hous...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/1/how-luxury-housing-
becomes-affordable)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
People who buy _luxury condos_ are probably not vacating _affordable housing_
to do so.

Why would you think that to be the case?

The Strong Towns link you provided gives two examples of apartments build
approximately a century ago.

Trickle-down economics at its best.

Build luxury apartments, fine. Probably not exclusively though, as in many
cities the need is more pressing than that.

~~~
aljg
No, that would be patently absurd. Of course they're vacating (the upper end
of) mid-priced housing.

It's almost as if an equivalent amount of mid-priced housing would suddenly
become available. I wonder who you think would move into that?

Build _up_.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
You don’t reckon landlords of those upper-end mid-priced dwellings are asking
more for rent every time a lease ends and a new one starts?

Because that _does seem_ to be what’s happened in _many_ cities.

One issue here is ideological: is housing a universal right, or is housing a
capital good to be accumulated and regulated to be artificially scarce?

~~~
jeromegv
Landlords charge more because people are still showing up to the open-house to
rent. So of course they would increase rent. What you're describing is supply
and demand. We lack supply. You can be sure the rent would go lower if nobody
was at the door asking to rent their place. In fact, that's exactly what's
happening right now with rent price in Toronto. Immigration is slowed, airbnbs
visitors are gone and supply is up. Price are going down.

------
Tiktaalik
I followed the Google Sidewalk Labs/Toronto development for a while from a
place of confusion more than anything else. Never really figured out what
problem Sidewalk Labs was trying to solve or how technology was going to make
a positive impact on peoples' urban lives.

The dominant problems that cities face are really the ancient ones of class
conflict, racism and land use, with the core issue being that of the rich
making life worse for the poor through politics and exclusionary zoning.

You could make cities dramatically better with only 19th century levels of
technology (ie. the bicycle). Of course you'd need to have a political culture
willing to share land and remove it from exclusive car use. Apparently a tall
order.

The core things holding NA cities back are entirely political in nature.

------
martythemaniak
The backlash against this is pretty ridiculous. Despite the dystopian
rhetoric, in reality it was a small project of 12 acres that would have held a
few condos. By comparison CityPlace is 44 acres and was also done by one
company.

So shat do people imagine will happen now? Instead of trying something new and
interesting on a small scale, that same land will be given to another generic
developer (Concord/Tridel/whatever) and they'll just do more of same. It's not
bad, just meh. But honestly, Toronto is a fairly conservative place, so it
makes sense.

~~~
saltedonion
I think most people were bothered by the technology integration, and not the
urban planning.

------
greendave
> An independent panel was set up to scrutinise its plans and released a
> report suggesting some of its ideas were "tech for tech's sake", and
> potentially unnecessary.

I wonder what could have given them that idea.

> In his blog, Dan Doctoroff said the firm continued to invest in start-ups
> "working on everything from robotic furniture to digital electricity".

Oh, right.

~~~
Skunkleton
> digital electricity

This marketing term piqued my interest. Turns out it is basically PoE. Ok.

------
helen___keller
Sidewalk labs has a LOT of good ideas but, even putting aside privacy concerns
related to Google ownership, the simple fact is that these good ideas are
nearly intractable even when planned by trusted organizations with the best of
intentions. Western cities just don't move very fast nowadays, for better and
for worse.

Maybe this would work better in a country where cities develop faster and with
less protest from citizens, but a lot of sidewalk labs best ideas boil down to
"more affordable housing and less cars" which are mainly Western problems that
derive from a lack of good urban development in the first place.

~~~
AIME15
Works best if you can just steamroll through with the project from the start.
PoC small scale (though much larger than 12 acres, which is about 2 Manhattan
city blocks), then large scale.

Requires feds to be totally on board, have the power to green light everything
quickly, and have tons of capital to deploy. Unfortunately for SWL, it's not
possible for an Alphabet company to build in Saudi Arabia or China.

~~~
asdff
They could try in Jakarta, or Singapore, or Japan, or Korea, or hundreds of
other places around the world. There are plenty of places with a dearth of
capital and labor coupled with a willingness to build modern cities that
aren't Saudi Arabia or China.

------
pupppet
TO dodged a bullet.

It's Google's nature to lose interest and abandon their products. You think
it's bad with software, imagine them building part of your city.

~~~
leoh
The cynicism here boggles the mind. You can talk blue in the face about all
the products they haven't killed that power the world and people will just
shake their heads in dismay and walk away muttering about Google Reader.

~~~
OrangeMango
Categorize Google's products into two buckets - "home grown" and "bought the
company". Then it starts to make a lot more sense.

~~~
Arelius
Hmm, I think I lack the insight to know what this means.

Knowing that YouTube and Android were acquisitions, suggests that acquisitions
may have more lasting potential, but I don't know enough about gmail, docs,
maps, etc to know if any of them were home grown.

And looking at the list of acquisitions don't really clarify anything, all of
their successful products seem to have some amount of acquisitions involved,
but it's unclear to me if they were all sourced from the company, or if they
bought companies to bring in talent into an ongoing home grown environment.

------
AIME15
The scope-limiting to 12 acres announced on October 31 was perceived as a win
for the regulators, giving them more control over the project over time. At
that point the project timeline became untenable for SWL's plans but couldn't
back out due to PR concerns for Alphabet. The pandemic is a convenient excuse
for the company to abandon the Quayside project.

For the last three years SWL has bent over backwards to be transparent about
its plans and address community concerns. Plans have repeatedly been scaled
down to the point where it makes absolutely no financial sense to move
forward.

The calculation to bet the company on Toronto was made before this recent
backlash against Big Tech. I suspect it would have been made differently had
the company started a year later.

~~~
eddyionescu
The 12-acres (just Quayside) was what Toronto's RFP asked for in the first
place and Sidewalk Labs won out for
([https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2017/10/17/google-
fir...](https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2017/10/17/google-firm-wins-
competition-to-build-high-tech-quayside-neighbourhood-in-toronto.html)), which
now turns out to have not been financially viable for them given the high cost
of their R&D (including those mass-timber buildings which aren't even in
Ontario's building code yet). Sidewalk Lab's wider plans were really an
unsolicited proposal that no one asked for, so it's unfair to blame
"regulators" or the tech backlash.

~~~
AIME15
Agreed that the responsibility was 100% on SWL to build consensus among the
community and decision makers in Waterfront Toronto and Toronto's government
entities. I'm just saying that this became a lot tougher due to the change in
public opinion on big tech.

------
ericzawo
What a colossal waste of time and money that confirms the obvious to anyone
who actually lives in the city — they never really were about improving the
downtown core neighbourhood of Quayside, which is ripe for development, and
instead wanted to use public land and money for R&D. Good riddance and I hope
people who are serious about aiding the public take note in the missteps
Sidewalk made time and again, to fail to win the trust of the very city they
were trying to become a community member of.

------
dirtyid
Shame, some genuinely descent ideas in terms of building science and urban
design. 11/10 chance the technology elements would have gone the way of the
Google Grave yard after 10years, but at least it will leave a set of
interesting buildings to draw lessons from. Now nothing. Lots will stay empty
or be filled with generic condo developments with questionable longevity. The
Google branding and Silicon Valley outreach style didn't help. Simultaneously,
the inability for western societies to at least entertain rapid urban
experiments is going to backfire. I'm not a big fan of Google, but they have
fuck you resources and at least tried to direct it in prosocial designs with
the expected cost of privacy. If they can't succeed in Toronto then it doesn't
bode well for anyone else.

------
frereubu
Enjoy the HN cynicism from July 2018:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17487838](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17487838)

~~~
3pt14159
For those of us that live in Toronto and have experienced Palmerston and City
Place; Kensington Market and Metro groceries it's so obvious that another set
of condos built by a giant corporation are not what we need. You can call me
cynical all you like, I'd rather have my city move in the direction of Europe
(Vilnius or Paris) than Manhattan or Tokyo.

Count me as one of the many happy people that this fell through, even though
I'm generally positive about Google's other enterprises.

~~~
nickff
What is the difference between the four cities you mention? At least three of
them have been restricting density, resulting in steadily increasing prices.

~~~
thinkloop
I would guess skyscrapers vs. 4 stories. West/East Village in Manhattan are
generally considered the most pleasant and they are skyscraper-free.

~~~
ehsankia
What is the source on Sidewalk Labs planning to build skyscrapers? The
definition of a skyscraper is over 40 floors, the most I see in any of the
mock designs are at most a dozen floors. Sure it's not 4-floor either, but
Quayside is fairly small so if they put 4-floor apartments, you'd maybe fit
100 people total.

------
saeranv
I'll add another perspective to this, beyond the privacy/data ownership
debate.

The global building stock currently supplies roughly 40% of the world's
greenhouse gas emissions; and we are in the midst of the largest growth of
urbanism in human history concentrated in neighborhoods least equipped to deal
with it. I've worked in the architecture/urban design sector for 6+ years
(half as an architect, half as a researcher), and one of the most critical
problems we have to address is the way we are attempting to optimize the
building energy/embodied carbon use of buildings. It's a messy multivariable
optimization problem, tied to time-consuming, complex simulation engines, that
the industry is forced to try and solve as single-variable optimization with
various hacks and rule of thumbs.

I am very biased on this topic since I work in this area, but I feel this is
fundamentally a ML/AI problem and I had/have some hope that Sidewalk labs
could add the resources and brainpower to move the needle further, faster with
the existing SOTA. Personally, I felt this provided the project with a very
straightforward, explicit ethical utility, so as a Torontonian I've never been
against it. I also was excited about the prospect of building up a community
of building science-focused ML/AI researchers tackling a currently underserved
existential threat. I know this isn't the end of Sidewalk Labs, but I feel
like this is a huge loss for us.

------
cal5k
People are cheering, but as a broader statement this is a small sample of how
difficult it is to do business in Canada.

~~~
thinkloop
The article says the issue is Corona not Canada?

~~~
ehsankia
Whether the final blow was due to COVID-19 or if it was just an excuse, it
doesn't change the fact that it's been an uphill battle for over 3 years with
very little progress.

------
dade_
I consider it part of my neighbourhood. I am glad this is over. There are so
many issues, but essentially the city is in over its head on this entire
concept from the beginning. Further, I think Waterfront Toronto overstepped
it's mandate. At the time, Google love was high, and politicians were
enamoured with the attention and jumped into bed without even a thought.

In the end, Google is an ad tech company, so no thank you. The scorpion and
the frog...

------
Wacko_dacko
This is great news. As a Torontonian I found their plan to be nothing more
than a money grab on public space and the public in general. They also
massively overreached in all their applications to the city.

~~~
leoh
> I found their plan to be nothing more than a money grab on public space and
> the public in general

You're going to get a big real estate developer doing it instead.

~~~
52-6F-62
_Maybe_.

Their plan would have implied the eradication of the properties of much of the
film industry in the city who would have had to move to likely more expensive
locations.

Frankly, I was surprised they were cleared to build residences in that area
(or were they?)

When I worked in the film industry down on Commissioners—just a short bit west
of Cherry St—there was still phosphorus seeping up through the ground on
occasion...

AFAIU Waterfront Toronto has rule over the area and they've done some pretty
great work with the Harbourfront area, so I would put faith in them to do a
good job with the region. I think their major roadblock (prior to the
pandemic) is funding.
[https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/nbe/portal/waterfront/Home/w...](https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/nbe/portal/waterfront/Home/waterfronthome/projects)

[https://portlandsto.ca/project-details/](https://portlandsto.ca/project-
details/)

------
OJFord
Isn't it ironic to blame the coronavirus? I imagine an alternate timeline in
which it's a success story for the already-built 'smart city', with the masses
of data it offers aiding crisis management in <ways>.

------
ocdtrekkie
Seems like they are using COVID-19 as an excuse to dump a sinking ship while
trying to save face. Real estate value isn't going up, interest rates are
going way down. But since people found out what Google was trying to do with
Quayside, they've had nothing but opposition.

EDIT: Update from CNBC: "Toronto was expected to make its final decision on
whether or not to let the project move forward on May 20."

------
neilv
"Ann Cavoukian, former Ontario privacy commissioner, resigns from Sidewalk
Labs", 2018-10-21. [https://globalnews.ca/news/4579265/ann-cavoukian-resigns-
sid...](https://globalnews.ca/news/4579265/ann-cavoukian-resigns-sidewalk-
labs/)

"Google's 'Smart City of Surveillance' Faces New Resistance in Toronto",
2018-11-13. [https://theintercept.com/2018/11/13/google-quayside-
toronto-...](https://theintercept.com/2018/11/13/google-quayside-toronto-
smart-city/)

------
lostgame
‘I’ve met thousands of Torontonians from all over the city, excited by the
possibility of making urban life better for everyone.’

This is simply not true, in my experience as a Torontonian. The overall
opinion of this project was incredibly low, from at least dozens of people
it’s come up with - at work, at events, with friends - if anything, there’ll
be a lot of people happy to hear this. There were even questions as to why our
tax dollars would even support this when we’ve got issues like homelessness,
etc. As Forbes said, it was ‘tech for tech’s sake’.

Forbes: ‘In June of 2019, Sidewalk’s master plan was released, eliciting a
barrage of controversy around privacy and participation.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association initiated a lawsuit against local,
provincial and federal government over data privacy concerns. Vice called the
proposal a “democracy grenade“.‘

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellistalton/2019/09/26/why-
side...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellistalton/2019/09/26/why-sidewalk-
labs-toronto-plan-is-flawed/amp/)

Edit: I’m shocked at the number of downvotes for similar comments - I guess
backing up your points counts. If you don’t think this closure is good for
Toronto, especially if you live here, I’d like to know why.

~~~
annapurna
Couldn't agree more as a Torontonian. It didn't help that they conducted most
of the discussions in bad faith with the whole "trust us with your data"
approach when these were geniune concerns due to the amount of oversight and
control they were provided.

~~~
brutus1213
I agree that this was a train wreck in slow motion. What is sad is I didn't
see any significant open engagement with GTA's existing tech scene (did hear a
lot of talk of it though). Maybe the VCs club had access but as a
technologist, I certainly didn't. If this was happening in SF, there would be
grass roots meetups all over the place, and a more serious focus on action
rather than planning.

~~~
dirtyid
They did a series of town halls, funded a bunch of urban / tech meetups.
Pretty proactive for a period. The townhalls were very... SF style, it didn't
mesh with the local culture well. But I don't think they did a lot of work
either, there's a pretty lackluster showroom and they put out some very
middling concept sketches - not proper renders like you see in most smart city
projects. Didn't seem like they were taking things seriously. A lot of words.
Maybe too many. At least not enough right ones.

------
iclelland
Discussion at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23103610](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23103610)
as well

------
rkagerer
As a former Toronto resident I'm glad about this. In my eyes, Google lacks the
track record or level of trust appropriate to make them a good fit for the
project. They fall short on basics like privacy, user experience and
commitment.

Toronto has a thriving tech community; I'd love to see some of the less-
controversial ideas pioneered on a smaller scale by local small businesses who
will eat their own dogfood.

------
simonebrunozzi
"The city of the future" has been a passion of mine for several years now. I
even co-founded a company driven by the desire to create one eventually (the
company then moved to a cool product to digitize titles, US only for now; and
secured seed funding long after I left).

I always had a problem with this initiative by Google, and others in general.
These things don't scale.

You want to build the city of the future? It should be 10x more affordable,
10x less polluting, and be built 10x faster than traditional cities. It should
find inspiration from Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, Leon Krier, etc.

Sometimes I still dream about doing something about it. This blog post somehow
summarizes where this desire comes from: "unf*ck" [0]. It's such a massive
problem though. I keep thinking that I don't have the chops to be able to do
anything about it.

[0]: [https://medium.com/the-naked-
founder/unfuck-710afbaa4092](https://medium.com/the-naked-
founder/unfuck-710afbaa4092)

------
jungletime
Thats a shame. I always thought Google would do a double plus good job of it.
Who wouldn't want a listening device in their toilet. Just skip the town, and
make a better smarter toilet Google. Control the world, starting with the
throne. Thats where many are already watching youtube from anyway now. Take my
temperature and test me for corona, update my social score and unlock the
e-lock to leave my apartment. The Future.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcUAG6t5aN8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcUAG6t5aN8)

------
donpdonp
$50M and two years later - where are the conclusions? The results? A blog post
of what happened? Two years seems like enough time to say we tried some
amazing things and this is how it did or did not work.

~~~
reportingsjr
Two years is nothing when it comes with planning and development in the US,
unfortunately.

A little anecdote, here in Cincinnati I was peripherally involved with a local
nonprofit taking over management of an abandoned bit of city part to build new
multi-use trails. It took 20 years for the park board to even listen, then
once an agreement was reached it took another /year and a half/ to get the
paperwork to the point where they would officially sign it. Just for a group
to build trails, with no money needed from the city, no permits, etc.

Projects like what sidewalk labs was trying to accomplish frequently take 5-10
years+ to get anywhere. Planning in the US is absolute garbage. It is a big
part of the reason SF and other large US cities are so expensive. Luckily
there are some groups like YIMBY making headway here.

~~~
gamblor956
_local nonprofit taking over management of an abandoned bit of city_

This is why it took a long time. The city was handing over management over
_part of itself_ in perpetuity. That needs to be done with care and
deliberation.

Moreover, there are liability issues related to third parties making
alterations to city lands that could result in ruinous liability to the city
if citizens get injured on the altered lands and the city didn't fully inspect
the alterations.

You also have potential drainage and soil issues to deal with, which need to
be reviewed by geologists. And that's not getting into environmental reviews
if there are at-risk species dwelling in that park.

All of those things take time. Programmers always complain about their
customers wanting X in a few weeks when it really takes months.

So why are programmers always complaining that it takes engineers, geologists,
architects, and city planners months to do _their_ jobs? Unlike programming,
the stuff these professionals are doing/reviewing can't just be fixed with a
patch.

~~~
52-6F-62
Thankfully Waterfront Toronto has been doing those studies and has their own
plan for the region! They want to convert a large part of the area into green
lands and proper drainage of the Don River to prevent further flooding.

I'm not sure if SWL's plan would have worked in conjunction with that work or
if they would have overridden it.

------
xozorion
The idea of “smart cities” seems great, and a lot of prominent people in
tech/VC seem to be on board.

Yet at the same time, I just don’t see a realistic way to make this happen
(zoning, NIMBYism) unless we’re talking about desolate places that still have
cheap real estate, but where nobody wants to live anyways e.g. Montana and the
Dakotas.

~~~
asdff
History repeats itself. I'm willing to bet none of these people are aware of
the failure of Epcot, the first smart city effort, when they take their
families to Disneyworld. There are just too many people in this world who
would prefer to say no to change.

------
karmakaze
The promised green-space would have been awesome. In all, I'm thrilled that
Toronto won't be the first guinea pig testing out a privacy-flexible smart
city. If it works well in other places and everyone's happy, we can get the
new improved one with the quirks fixed.

------
iamleppert
No doubt this was likely guided by some misguided desire to make everything
look and function like one of their Google campuses. Google is one of the most
dehumanizing companies in the entire history of civilization.

------
g8oz
Google HQ never seemed to have to much to do with this. It was rather their
subsidiary Sidewalk Labs that was going to make it happen. They always struck
me as long on "vision" and short on execution.

~~~
mrtron
I am a very optimistic individual, and have considered this project as
vapourware since day one. All vision and posturing, and no execution over
years.

------
kgin
They will find a city for the next go-around that has more to gain and less
nimby-ism. A Pittsburgh or a Detroit.

------
34679
I'm all for smart cities, just not ones built by advertising companies.

------
NN88
Google has a pattern of pull out of high profile announcements. Its striking.

------
calvinbhai
This should be next in the killedbygoogle.com entries

------
FpUser
The last thing we need is super rich foreign corporation building spyware
company towns and buying our government.

------
iamgopal
Could have tried in India...

------
oiasdjfoiasd
And collectively, Torontonians breath a sigh relief

------
reagular
"Smart city" sound like a Orwellian dystopia

------
TLightful
LOL .... man, google is a joke.

I'm half expecting an announcement that they're sunsetting their search
business.

------
at_a_remove
Does this count for the Google Graveyard? I'm still waiting for that
miraculous Google Fiber to come rolling in here.

I am wondering precisely how projects get the green light at Google. This kind
of thing is just ... it's like someone read some shiny-eyed sci-fi story from
the 1950s and decided to Brave New World it into being with metrics without
asking if anyone would find it objectionable or even desirable.

~~~
pb7
Google Fiber was a major success that got ousted by the incumbents with never
ending lawsuits and resistance. Take your anger out on the monopoly ISPs
across the country.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
This is untrue. Talk to Louisville, where Google put trenches in the roadways,
loosely covered them up with foam, letting the average snowplow rip up their
network.

Fiber used real cities as experiment grounds, and ended up with at least one
solution so bad they left the city rather than fix it, and had to settle with
the city for all the damages to their roadways.

Pictures: [https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-
fix...](https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix-exposed-
fiber-lines-in/article_fbc678c3-66ef-5d5b-860c-2156bc2f0f0c.html) (Ignore the
title, Google decided not to repair anything.)

~~~
ehsankia
> Talk to Louisville, where Google put trenches in the roadways

Yes, Louisville was indeed a failure. They tried something different to help
speed up laying out lines, and it didn't work. All that is not really relevant
to the comment above, which still is true regardless of the issue in
Louisville.

> Ignore the title, Google decided not to repair anything

That's misleading, they decided to instead pay the city for the repairs
instead of doing it themselves.

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2019/04/googl...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2019/04/google-fiber-exits-louisville-pays-city-3-8m-to-clean-up-
the-mess-it-left/)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Originally they intended to repair the fiber lines and keep the network in
Louisville, they decided to give the city money when they backed out so that
the city could clean up the damage: Presumably by ripping up the fiber network
entirely.

Most of their other ideas were similarly discount. They bought fiber in places
it was already run, and their issue with ISPs revolved around a push to demand
the right to move AT&T's equipment around on AT&T's poles to make room for
their own without supervision.

ISPs have their problems but Google wasn't in it to build a long-term, quality
infrastructure. They were trying to make a splash on the cheap, but the costs
would be bound to go up anywhere they couldn't employ cheap hacks.

~~~
ehsankia
> the right to move AT&T's equipment around on AT&T's poles to make room for
> their own without supervision.

That makes it sound like Google was being pushy here, but in reality, ISPs
were being intentionally as slow and obtrusive as possible to cripple Google's
expansion, which is exactly why Fiber failed. If they were given X days to do
something, they would do it on the (x-1)th day on purpose to waste Google's
time and delay them as much as possible.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It makes sense to be very careful with this sort of thing. Comcast is infamous
for "accidentally" severing other ISP's lines whilst running their own.

Also, given that Google has been playing the (x-1)th day game with the EU for
_nearly a decade_ , and asking for every possible extension in order to
respond to even the most basic requests... let's not act like ISPs are bad and
Google is good. Google is a bad actor that was trying to edge in on another
market of bad actors.

------
na85
My issue with Sidewalk Labs was the incredibly obvious facade they put up:
pretending to care about making cities better when it really was just a thin
veneer over finding new ways to expand surveillance capitalism. In fact their
"Head of Urban Systems" was quoted[0] as saying that public discussions over
data ownership and privacy were "irresponsible". The true agenda is plainly
obvious to anyone who cares to look.

I'm heartened to see that there is a slow but growing opposition to parasitic
business practices such as Sidewalk Labs' proposal and surveillance capitalism
in general. Despite Zuckerberg's attempts to convince us that privacy is
dead[1], I think people still realize on some base level that privacy,
especially offline, is still valuable.

[0] [https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/09/how-smart-should-a-
ci...](https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/09/how-smart-should-a-city-be-
toronto-is-finding-out/569116/)

[1] [https://youtu.be/LoWKGBloMsU](https://youtu.be/LoWKGBloMsU)

~~~
verelo
So this comment is being downvoted a lot, but i've got to say there was a lot
of concern from local residents. The largest concern everyone raised with me
was that "Google will ditch this as soon as it suits them, leaving us with a
mess of 'smart tech' to deal with for decades to come".

Well, i hate to say it, maybe they were right? Turns out they ditched it
before it even got moving, this might be a blessing in disguise.

~~~
claudeganon
Unfortunately, a lot of people in tech ascribe to a kind of utopian
imperialism. It doesn’t matter what people themselves want, it’s about what
engineered fantasies can be imposed upon them.

~~~
na85
Yeah I dunno, I'm basically showering in downvotes right now but it seems to
be just Silicon Valley types who are upset that Torontonians didn't welcome
their dystopia with fanfare and adulation.

