How cracks could appear in the Sidewalk dream

Just wait until the Google offshoot has to face the parochial realities of city hall. That's when Sidewalk Labs' admiration for Toronto's "openness to new things" could start to wear thin.

Thestar.com
Nov. 7, 2017
By Christopher Hume

Almost as interesting as Sidewalk Labs' plan for the Toronto waterfront is the response to it. Pundits here and abroad have spilt much ink on the project, and though some like what they see, many are convinced the sky will soon fall on poor little us.

One critic, writing in the Guardian, worried that Quayside is a Trojan Horse that will allow Sidewalk to take over the city. This "model of creating our urban future," we were warned, "is also an insidious way of handing more control - over people, places, policies - to profit-driven, power-hungry corporations."

One hates to have to say it, but we handed control to those power-hungry corporations decades ago. In the Toronto region, developers dictate not only where we live, but how. Many municipal politicians, dependant on developers for donations, serve them faithfully.

Closer to home, one observer argued that the deal plays into a false narrative that government can't deliver innovation. This in a city that agonizes at the mere mention of a bike lane, a city that will rebuild a notorious urban expressway when cities everywhere are tearing theirs down.

Then there were those critics who fretted, more understandably, about the loss of privacy. A community built "from the internet up," they insist, will turn residents into lab rats run by data-crazy techno-geeks seeking to record our every move. Where have they been? We willingly gave up privacy years ago in return for the convenience of computerized connectivity. Our screens watch us as much as we watch them.

The real issue, of course, is Quayside's sister company, Google. Though we couldn't survive without the tech titan, when we think about it, we fear it.

But perhaps it's worth looking at the deal Waterfront Toronto offered Sidewalk Labs; basically, it means the latter will spend up to $50 million (U.S.) and devote a year to research and then reveal its plan for Quayside. Most importantly, the agreement does not commit Waterfront or the city to accept that plan.

Perhaps it's also worth considering the tsunami of development that has already changed the face of Toronto. It gets much less attention locally, let alone internationally. Except for NIMBY rage, it goes largely ignored. Unless a Margaret Atwood or Galen Weston Jr. is involved, it's unlikely that the fate of a similar-sized 12-acre site in, say, North York or Etobicoke would attract enough people to fill the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, as Quayside did last week.

More likely, it would be the subject of one or two public meetings in a church basement, or maybe a high school auditorium, where some unlucky planner or architect would be on hand to defend an obviously inappropriate scheme before an audience angry that it was about to lose the neighbourhood McDonalds or a Timmy's that has been there for years. Those who showed up for last week's "fireside chat" at least got to hear and question the CEOs of Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto, Dan Doctoroff and Will Fleissig respectively.

When was the last time the millionaire president of a large development corporation deigned to appear before a neighbourhood he was about to change forever?

And where's city hall in all this? Quietly, surreptitiously, with little media coverage, it's considering an alternative scheme to hand over much of the Port Lands to the film industry for big-box studios and back lots. That both scenarios are playing out at the same time is a disturbing measure of civic dysfunction.

Sidewalk comes to Toronto with impressive ambition and deep pockets, seemingly determined to do something "truly historic." Doctoroff speaks of lowering the cost of both housing and transit significantly. When was the last time developers or the city made such promises?

But so far Sidewalk has only had to deal with Waterfront Toronto, a relatively enlightened tripartite agency. The trouble will start when it faces the ugly parochialism of a municipal culture less interested in city-building than in retro moves like expanding the elevated highway in whose shadow Quayside will be built. Sidewalk's admiration for Toronto's "openness to new things" could soon start to wear thin.

Then again - who knows? - things might just work out. Let's not forget how Torontonians rose up to stop Doug Ford's crass scheme to give away the Port Lands for a mega-mall. Torontonians had to save the waterfront then. They may have to again.