The controversial Toronto "Google City" project, the first foray of one of the digital giants into the world of urban planning, will never see the light of day. Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, announced on Thursday, May 7, that it was giving up developing the futuristic neighborhood planned on a brownfield site in the Canadian metropolis, due to "Unprecedented economic uncertainty" created by the coronavirus crisis, especially for "The Toronto real estate market".
"It has become too difficult to make the 5 hectare project financially viable without sacrificing essential elements of the plansaid Daniel Doctoroff, CEO of Sidewalk Labs, in a statement. After long deliberations, we concluded that it no longer made sense to continue the project. "
This abandonment brings an abrupt end to two and a half years of a stormy collaboration between Google’s little New York sister and the city of Toronto to give birth, on the shores of Lake Ontario, to what had become one of the projects of The most observed and the most debated “smart city” in the world. The Waterfront Toronto public authority had chosen Sidewalk Labs, in October 2017, to imagine a model and innovative district in terms of urban planning, ecology and digital technologies. The company then committed to "Create the district of the future" and to "Set new standards for a healthier planet", assured Mr. Doctoroff.
Artificial intelligence
Called Quayside, this project had gradually taken shape, Sidewalk Labs investing some 34 million euros to develop its proposals. But beyond the images of wooden buildings, modular public spaces, heated bicycle paths or delivery robots in underground galleries, the debate quickly focused on the question of data confidentiality and respect of privacy.
Sidewalk Labs imagined creating a "Digital layer" doubling the physical layout of the city, in which artificial intelligence systems would use all kinds of data collected by batteries of sensors to optimize the management of urban services.
Fears about a commercial use of the data collected had fueled strong opposition, gathered in particular in the citizen collective #BlockSidewalk. And leads Roger McNamee, one of the first Facebook investors and ex-advisor to its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to qualify this project in June 2019 "The most advanced version at this time of surveillance capitalism". The resignation of several personalities recruited by Sidewalk Labs to guarantee an "ethical" use of this data had only aggravated the concerns.
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