What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?
onezero.medium.com
onezero.medium.com
Imagine you lived there and your google account gets banned by some overzealous ML model. Do you just get locked out of your house?
If Google, or any other company, wants to make this kind of development, they should be regulated as a public utility and be accountable as such
Also, this was housing for meant their employees, most of which will have high salaries and be in high tax brackets.
So not only did we loose a few thousand housing units, now we also lost a few thousand future employees each of which would be paying $20 - 40 000 CAD in taxes to us every single year.
That is terrible.
It basically boiled down to somewhere between a mediocre and a pretty bad deal for the local economy, instead of letting a local developer do their thing. I wouldn't have been surprised if it ended up costing (especially if you add in the land discount and subsidies) taxpayers well over a billion dollars. The whole thing reeked of a PR stunt for the Gov working with Big Tech, but I don't know of a single citizen who thought it was a good idea.
Next time, follow a fair RFP process. I'd rather have Amazon try and develop the waterfront.
People have an opinion about Google, but they have never heard of any of the other companies that would have done the exact same thing, just with shittier neighborhood wifi.
They all get discounted land from the city, modify the original RFP scope to fit their vision, push the city to create an attractive level of services, drop in a token number of low income houses, and flip the houses for a profit.
We don't need neighborhood WiFi -- Fiber is widely available within the city and it's a lot cheaper than what I saw in the US.
Due to COVID-19, there has been far more innovation in the city, mostly top-down from the government, than what we saw with Sidewalk. Who cares if they can reconfigure the street? Let people ride their bikes, build community spaces, etc.
Sidewalk garnered negative public opinion because they tried to overreach what people are comfortable with from a real estate developer. Look at what Amazon did in Seattle over the last decade, and maybe take a page out of their book, instead of hand-waving about self-driving cars you're dreaming of sprinkling around the neighbourhood.
For the most part the experiment was confined to the land they legally purchased. At no point did they represent the project as anything other than an experiment. If the land was sold below market, you should have spoken up at the time about that.
It is perfectly fair for the people of Toronto to push back and re-evaluate the value proposition of the deal if the other party is attempting to renegotiate.
No.
No.
Not even sure that data privacy killed this project. It was probably the bias against action that plagues every branch of government nowadays.
The cheap security cameras are relatively trivial to gain access too at scale and you can run facial recognitioning on their video with zero accountability.
At least with google and facebook you get a non-zero level of accountability.You can still summon their CEO in front of the public somewhere for questioning.
Or if you're an EU citizen you can demand you data be wiped off.
You can't practically do that with an insecure patchwork of security cameras. This is why I think the privacy concerns for this project were quite misguided.
In my opinion it's better to go with a single choice of where security video with identifiable faces is going instead of having no clue who's tracking you. I'm not personally happy that that choice is Google given their screwup with nest and with 3rd-party dev access to gmail, however I think the practical outcome is a lot worse when not choosing anything at all.
If smart cities are inevitable, then a mega-corporation like Google with all the resources in the world should be jumping at the opportunity to build a new settlement where none currently exists. Shouldering the cost of such a project should not be a hindrance for them considering the potential economic benefits for themselves.
Let them create their own proof of concept and incentivize people to live and work there. The shift to remote work in the Covid age makes this much more feasible now than in the past.
No need to glom their surveillance technology on to an existing metropolis where people are already settled and don't have the option to opt out to any meaningful degree.
When I lived in San Francisco proper this was the same reason I didn't have high speed fiber. NIMBYs didn't want a little green can out front of their houses.
Sometimes progress has to be made despite the residents so they can ultimately reap the benefits.
The only thing that has eroded NIMBY power in California in my lifetime has been state laws, and only very recently, and only just barely.
Isn't that the definition of democracy? Why should I be able to take what someone else has just because I want it?
Another example is a bunch of old ladies get together and have my house designated as a "historically significant" structure, thereby robbing me of my ability to build anything else, or even repaint the window sashes. You wouldn't believe that in Berkeley, California, this is perfectly legal without the agreement of the owner, right? In fact it's legal to do this without even _notifying_ the owner.
Finally, there's a pretty strong moral and ethical argument to be made that if I'm born and raised in a town and I live there my whole life but due to a housing crisis I am forced to move elsewhere, I should have had some input into the government of the original place. We shouldn't be saying that we divest our children in favor of their parents, just because they are the incumbents. That's just wrong.
> Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.
> [...]
> [A] pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
- James Madison Federalist Paper 10
But there's probably room for smart cities created by the public sector where no personal data is collected and the goal is livability rather than profit.
I used to have to bus through that region every single day (I don't miss the 72 Cherry one bit).
Managing privacy permissions of anyone just commuting through would be a logistical nightmare—and not just for Sidewalk.
Sounds like an instance of what this comment describes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24123463
As for the rest, I'm not much of a gambler.
Alphabet's current policies on data collection are typically opt-out, so I didn't hold out much hope when I largely saw a lot of hand-waving surrounding data policies until the project was pressed by the public about it. That cost me a lot of confidence the project.
And I come from the place of following the project eagerly at the start. Even looked for jobs with them at one point.
I'm not getting into any arguments today.
If you bypass political consent, and the only culture that matters is the culture inside a hierarchical controlling organization, then of course you can impose anything and call it a success. It's frightening that Google (let's not get distracted by corporate name games) expected this, but perhaps it shouldn't be surprising. It's what they get from their users every day. All they wanted was to do in physical space what they did on the web: set up a system of technological surveillance and have people embrace it for the conveniences they could build on top.
But development takes a long time, and between the initial agreement and the plan being released, public opinion had turned strongly against big-tech. Those Waterfront Toronto board members were basically fired for not foreseeing the change in public opinion.
As a Toronto resident there was more than enough news about how well reasoned arguments from Privacy experts weren't addressed very well by Sidewalk labs.
It isn't a very trivial thing when high profile people like Ann Cavoukian resigns from the project.
Portraying it as a case of NIMBYism gone too far is just revisionist history.
Beyond that, how many would have opted for "don't collect let alone use anything about me". I have never met anyone who actually wants their physical movement to be tracked by advertisers, not for infinite starbucks discounts. Most hesitate at the idea of employers or even family members tracking them 24/7.
Is that a real thing?
If not, have you asked for 3x normal salary, since they apparently think they own you 24/7?
How does one become a Privacy expert? What qualifications are needed?
Usually they tended to be either Law or Infosec folks who ended up in roles where they did consulting or setting up policies for companies. Then with experience becoming SMEs with regards to Privacy and either operating as independent consultants or working with governments/companies as Privacy officers/commissioners etc...
As far as I know most of them didn't have much in common as far as certs or specific educational background it was mostly a mix of similar work experiences as well as being in the same conference circuits.
Someone with more experience should probably address this :)
Why shouldn't we think that their Toronto project was anything less but an attempt to expand their iron grip into the physical world?
Ceding that much power, to a foreign entity no less, is a question of sovereignty.
I would love to see a new city designed from the ground up on some currently uninhabited plot of land. You could make it walkable, beautiful, design it to have higher density housing from the start—so many things that would be difficult to add to a city that already exists (an underground tube system for transporting food and packages??). I guess the economic and individual incentives just aren’t there. Even if you built it, would people come?
Every time this is brought up I fail to understand how people think that this time would be any different. Cities are agglomerations of patterns at every scale and the emergent beauty that arises is absolutely impossible to design in any sort of masterplan way. Organic cities are resilient in ways that we can't every really understand, and that's the important element in making a place that is livable for the longer term.
I can think of Washington DC and Salt Lake City that were planned and aren't disasters.
Ex: EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) was originally supposed to be this in the 60s[1]. And was in a place exactly like what you propose (a large uninhabited tract of land).
After Walt died they just made it a theme park of the future envisioned by giant corporations like Exxon.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epcot#1960s:_Experimental_conc...
The problem is when you start adding cameras and electronics. It's obvious Sidewalk Labs is just an arm of the Google data collection funnel. I don't want any part of that in my life.
What I object to is Google being the one entrusted with this data, with no oversight, and cross-referencing it with all the other data they have on me.
Cameras don't prevent crime. They may shift crime (if you have cameras and your neighbor doesn't, guess whose house is going to get burgled first?) and they may make crime easier to prosecute after, but they do not stop crime in any meaningful way.
And more than likely, the people who are spending a lot of money to buy and monitor those cameras don't really care about the shoplifters and graffiti artists - those crimes don't cost very much of society and stopping them is a low priority. Serious crimes like murders and home invasions are.. actually pretty rare and cameras generally don't catch them.
If you're spending millions to install cameras, record them constantly, and store all that footage in a way that's searchable.. it has nothing to do with crime. It has everything to do with monitoring your population.
Edit:
Found it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7469369.stm
I'm really quite surprised, you'd imagine having a bigger chance of getting caught would make people stop and think.
Probably the reason is, as you say, that those types of crime take place where the cameras mostly aren't, like indoors.
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.
It also reveals a greater cultural problem...
On Cultures That Build https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/06/on-cultures-that...
IT’S TIME TO BUILD https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/
Maybe I'm just getting old though, it's all downhill once you hit your 20s.
I especially didn't like the fact that the Sidewalk Labs employees were primarily New York-based with very little understanding or familiarity with the nuances of our city/province/country. Why are you remotely experimenting with our city instead of sending your teams here to develop it? Wouldn't familiarity with the surrounding neighbourhoods be an important factor in how you make a deep impact into the local environment?
Doctoroff managed to not address any of Balsillie's primary concerns. And I imagine most Americans are wilfully blind of the local issues when they come here. (Just look at how ownership of sports teams like the Montreal Expos turned out).
Google’s incompetence was multivalent. But that’s the nature of Dunning-Kruger incompetence. Toronto is not a bigger version of the bedroom communities it is familiar with. The site wasn’t lacking pie-in-the-sky planning exercises. Nor interest from deep pockets. The biggest incompetence was pitching the project as “what we want to do will finally put Toronto on the map.”
In real estate development, fanfare is to provide cover for fait accompli. Publicity before the ducks are rowed is amateur. Steamrollering opposition first requires a steamroller.
Resetting tenure for a new century solves 99% of the problems with trying to build on-top of inefficiency (schools, public utilities, local government, etc).
Toronto would have been better off with a sister city, developing a DFW-like economic area for the future instead of accelerating urban rot.
i know what those words mean, but not in this context. what does this mean?
Instead of "condescending", its probably just a clean canvas imbued with natural growth cycles (hence kindergarten, with nothing in-place to resist).
Saying "We the People have evolved" may be a stretch, but tenure and bad math are basic components of the rot-ops/rot-optics of prior innovations.
> Waterfront Toronto has received $1.25 billion to clean up and protect the Port Lands. Federal, Provincial and City financial contributions cover the total costs.
> ...nearly a century ago the Don Valley became heavily industrialized and the river was re-routed to enter the lake into a concrete channel. The new project is intended to create a new opening for the Don River.
Spend some time in Google Maps [2] and explain to me why this revitalization project has to be framed in terms of smart neighbourhoods, affordable housing, and digital privacy. The plan only has to be slightly smarter than 100% condos which seems to be the default for Toronto waterfront development.
Guess Toronto got its crap back.
> Affordable housing was a top concern among Toronto residents before the pandemic, and in the economic fallout it will only grow as a priority, she said, as an example.
It’s ironic. At least in technology, the way consumer prices declined in the last two decades has been through ads and data - by selling ad inventory inside apps and websites, and buying ads to reach targeted people more affordably.
Regardless of how you feel about data and surveillance and privacy or whatever, at least ad targeting has a long proven track record of actually delivering low real prices to consumers.
The only other thing I can think of that is as effective at reducing prices is software and media piracy. So maybe prices are a reductive lens. Then it should be obvious that affordability of housing is too a reductive lens. It can’t be both ways.
That really depends on how you define "real price", doesn't it? It's a price I'm not willing to pay.
We've had the Equifax hack, it isn't even a problem with ads, just data gathering generally, and we're all looking around for real damages there, just people who hypothesize that something something a meaningless form of speculative identity theft may have led to some abstract damage. I hate Equifax, and I hate the data gathering they do, but I'm not going to be a blowhard and say, "there were unobservable damages here and they must pay random suckers."
The BP Horizon oil spill put oil on the shores of Lousiana, there's real mispricing of environmental damage. But that shit is real, oil and pollution are real, they inhabit the literal real world. Your website browsing history is imaginary.
Time and time again people have been given the opportunity to pay for an e-mail client or a search engine. Dozens of software services. Ads are so obviously the superior way for the average end user to pay for networked services, trading your imaginary data that is basically only valuable in aggregate and has been very successfully sold anonymously-in-aggregate in exchange for not paying $10/mo for every single little software service you need. And then, because everyone has free e-mail and search, the surplus is enjoyed by society as a whole, instead of some kleptocratic corporation. If anything Google should be making so much more money!
You're paying the price. You choose to pay the price literally every day, it's ridiculous. Every one of these activists pays the price, they are walking-talking hypocrites. It's so intellectually dishonest to say you're not willing to pay it. You use the Internet, you're paying the price, don't use the Internet if you don't want to pay the price. You do, and you will, and there's nothing you can do about it.
The Sidewalk Labs people are the best positioned to provide below-market housing to meet the demand for it. Generally, the people doing innovative stuff with housing will actually succeed to meet demands for things the status quo will not provide. This is not saying much! We should be arguing for more innovative uses of land and architecture. Nobody would force you to live in the Sidewalk Labs complex!
That statement wasn't totally accurate. Waterfront Toronto already had a parklands plan drawn up to beautify the area, add usable space, and provide flooding relief waterways.
The rest of the area actually has a large number of businesses operating—many in the music and film industries. It's not a total wasteland. It's just cut off—one of the reasons the film industry has access to large lands down there.
I worked there for about 5 years so I'm not sure which foundations of demolished buildings they're talking about except for maybe The Hearn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearn_Generating_Station) which has been preserved as derelict so far for film and other shoots. Similarly with the "desolate parking lots". They were filled with trailers for shoots or Cirque du Soleil more often than not.
Just adding some context.
(The absolute drama that involves building anything in Toronto would drive you mad. Gaze upon the NIMBYs fighting tooth and nail to prevent high-density housing on the Danforth and despair.)
Do you think people would be willing to buy a house for cheap with the trade off being that Google and Facebook get to collect data on everything you did inside the house, and then got to display ads inside the house?
In the very least, the economic forces discounting the rents in the former scenario have a chance to scale massively, while tax funded public housing developments have been shrinking almost everywhere in market real estate cities.
The status quo of compelling developers to make below market housing while simultaneously reducing public housing units is on net reducing affordable housing units per capita everywhere.
Sidewalk Labs never advocated this though. They wanted to build essentially luxury developments. Maybe they would be a little cheaper than otherwise. People want to live in luxury apartments and not public housing!
The issue is not simple nor black and white. It’s just that the activists had an opportunity with Sidewalk Labs, who could have simply offered lower rents in exchange for data collection, that they will not have with any other alternative real estate developer, who have no positive ROI reason to offer below market housing.
This is the main reason for the housing crisis. Toronto has one of the lowest property tax rates in Canada; by bringing it closer to that of other cities we could fund a lot of public housing.
Some people want to live in luxury apartments. Many people just want to live indoors. Building more luxury condos for speculators to keep empty as investments doesn't really help make the city affordable to live in.
* Do ads make products they appear cheaper? If so do they make other things more expensive.
* Are products not paid for by ads cheaper due to automation, etc.? If so could they be even cheaper if not for ads?
I would say munging them together is intellectual dishonesty.