How Toronto Locals Soured on Alphabet’s Neighborhood of the Future
Sidewalk Labs, a sister company of Google, has a wildly ambitious plan for Toronto’s waterfront. But concerns about Big Tech and privacy are only growing.
By Jared Linzon
For one of the most contentious pieces of real estate in all of North America — not to mention ground zero for a global debate on data privacy and the future of urban development — it’s really not much to look at. Just a few abandoned silos poking up from an otherwise empty gravel lot, with a few small boats parked along its shores and a two-story blue building that houses the organization at the center of a rapidly intensifying debate.
On October 17, 2017, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood on that derelict gravel lot — shoulder to shoulder with the mayor as well as then-Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt — to announce a plan to turn that parcel of land along Toronto’s waterfront into a smart city project in partnership with Sidewalk Labs, an arm of Alphabet and sister company of Google.
With a promise to “reimagine cities from the internet up,” Sidewalk Labs proposed a future-ready neighborhood with all the latest smart city technologies baked in; an advanced, smart…
