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Cracks in Sidewalk Labs' Toronto waterfront plan after fanfare
Waterfront Toronto's refusal, for what it says are "commercial reasons," to release the text of the preliminary "agreement to agree" it signed in the fall with Sidewalk has led to accusations of excessive secrecy, even from Mayor John Tory's appointee to Waterfront Toronto's board, Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/new...ewalk-labs-plan-afterfanfare/article38103236/


Latest news on this.
 
Alphabet unit to start Toronto smart-city tech pilot in summer, build in 2020

A development plan is expected to be approved by the Sidewalk and Waterfront Toronto boards by the end of 2018, and the first residents could move in as early as 2022, CEO Dan Doctoroff said in an interview.

The timeline is subject to government approvals and other processes that Sidewalk expects to spend most of 2019 working through, Doctoroff said.

...

Sidewalk has invested $50 million for testing and engagement this year. It will lease a new waterfront office in summer, where it will showcase some Quayside technologies, he said.

So, we still gotta wait, but sounds like we are getting closer to seeing what they're planning, actually. I'm getting tired of blue sky generalities.
 
I'm getting tired of blue sky generalities.
Yeah....it's virtually a 'confidence racket' at this point in time.

Let me make a guess, albeit things might just be shrouded in secrecy: They don't have a plan. They've sold a dream, and now they not only have to figure out how to put that to tangible design, but legalities of doing this are under a scrutiny that didn't exist before, or at least, weren't enforced.

I think Minnan-Wong had it Right raising the flag last year on this.
[...]
Waterfront Toronto did not share agreement details with the governments that fund it before the Sidewalk Labs announcement, according to a city report that says future deals must be shared in advance for a “thorough review.” No city councillor except for Denzil Minnan-Wong, the city’s representative on the Waterfront Toronto board, has seen more than a summary — released under pressure — and he says Torontonians need to see the full agreement public.

“It’s happening very, very quickly, this deal,” Minnan-Wong, noting Sidewalk Labs makes no secret of the fact that some of its urban experiments would spill beyond Quayside into the 800-acre Port Lands owned mostly by the City of Toronto.

“How can Waterfront Toronto enter into any negotiation on something they have no claim to, no property rights for?” The land is in the city’s ownership, and we haven’t given away claim to 800 acres that are the crown jewels of the city, arguably the most valued land in North America.

“We have to be very careful not only how we plan that community, what we use the land for, but how we can maximize the financial benefits associated with that for the city.”

Sidewalk Labs’ role in developing waterfront land, unlocked by the promise of $1.25-billion in government-funded flood protection, remains unclear as work continues on an agreement expected later this year that, if signed by both parties, would formalize the Quayside project dubbed “Sidewalk Toronto.” [...]
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c....html+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=ubuntu

It's only laterly that Toronto's (Canada's) big press has started to take notice of 'inconsistencies' on this. The Financial Times, UK Guardian, NYTimes and others have been on it from the start.

Now getting back to that monorail in Springfield...
 
I only did a brief skim but right off the bat this stood out near the beginning: Sidewalk Toronto – a collaboration with Waterfront Toronto – will take over an 800-acre (324-hectare) area of unused waterfront east of Downtown and develop it from scratch.

Isn't Sidewalk doing only like 10 acres? I remember when the deal started it was for Quayside, but immediately Sidewalk went multinational proclaiming they're doing 800 acres (basically all the eastern waterfront). Has something changed, or is Sidewalk stretching things a bit (a lot)? If their first step is gross dishonesty I don't think I'd trust them.
 
The Sidewalk Building (ex-Raptors) is having a public open house on 16 June.

Opening June 16, 307 will welcome Torontonians — and all city lovers — to see Sidewalk's explorations-in-progress and engage with the tough questions facing our urban future. But to do that, the building suggests, we must also contend with the past.

You need to RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/open-sidewalk-at-307-tickets-46291288490
 
I only did a brief skim but right off the bat this stood out near the beginning: Sidewalk Toronto – a collaboration with Waterfront Toronto – will take over an 800-acre (324-hectare) area of unused waterfront east of Downtown and develop it from scratch.

Isn't Sidewalk doing only like 10 acres? I remember when the deal started it was for Quayside, but immediately Sidewalk went multinational proclaiming they're doing 800 acres (basically all the eastern waterfront). Has something changed, or is Sidewalk stretching things a bit (a lot)? If their first step is gross dishonesty I don't think I'd trust them.

This is what the City is angry about. The Sidewalk deal is for 12 (?) acres, and they hope to extend these services to all 800 acres in the Portlands in the future. It seems like somebody in their media department who doesn't know much about the project took that to mean an 800 acre project, and plastered it all over the publicity, and then international media ran away with it. This gave the usual curmudgeons on Council something to complain about. It was a major PR screw up, and they've had to hire local talent (John Brodhead and Ann Cavoukian), as they should, to clean up the mess.
 
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This part of the article annoyed me:
Toronto’s eastern waterfront is bleak enough that Guillermo del Toro’s gothic film The Shape of Water used it as a plausible stand-in for Baltimore circa 1962. Says Adam Vaughan, a former journalist who represents this district in Canada’s Parliament, “It’s this weird industrial land that’s just been sitting there—acres and acres of it. And no one’s really known what to do with it.”

That was before Google.

As if we were just sitting on this prime waterfront land with no idea how to use it until Google showed up. Never mind all the planning and infrastructure that WT has been doing for decades to get ready for this land to be developed. Google will (hopefully) make this development better, but we don't need them. East Bayfront is proof of that.

Anyway, the rest of the article was fine, but that part was bad.
 
This part of the article annoyed me:


As if we were just sitting on this prime waterfront land with no idea how to use it until Google showed up. Never mind all the planning and infrastructure that WT has been doing for decades to get ready for this land to be developed. Google will (hopefully) make this development better, but we don't need them. East Bayfront is proof of that.

Anyway, the rest of the article was fine, but that part was bad.
I'm half way through the article, have to read the rest later, but the self-congratulatory smugness is a bit much at times:
Fans of what’s become known as Sidewalk Toronto say there are few better places to have this conversation than Canada, a Western democracy that takes seriously debates over informational privacy and data ownership—and is known for managing to stay polite while discussing even hot-button civic issues.
huh?

Canada is a laggard in protecting "informational privacy and data ownership".

Perhaps the author missed the whole Analytica anal ysis?
 
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