Urban neoliberalism, smart city, and Big Tech: The aborted Sidewalk Labs Toronto experiment

ABSTRACT

On May 7, 2020, Sidewalk Labs (part of Alphabet, which includes Google) abandoned its Toronto waterfront redevelopment project after two-and-a-half years of planning, public relations, and bargaining with the public agency responsible for this sector. The official and final reason Sidewalk gave for its withdrawal was the uncertainty of the Toronto real estate market due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Few observers of the Toronto scene subscribed to this explanation. Events did not unfold as Sidewalk would have hoped for. Its Toronto venture exposes implementation difficulties of a form of neoliberalism combining the smart city model with an active involvement of Big Tech. The Toronto narrative suggests that while the materialization of this version of neoliberalism is advantaged by plentiful resources, futurist visions of the city, and access to new technology, it is not immune to implementation hurdles associated with the context-specific nature of neoliberal projects. The paper identifies three categories of obstacles that have hampered the reaching of the Sidewalk objectives in Toronto: opposition movements objecting to electronic surveillance, corporate control, and restrictions to democratic processes; the fragmentation of the neoliberal political block; and ill-advised strategies on the part of Sidewalk.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart city
• neoliberalism
• Big Tech
• Toronto

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge financial support from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Research Grant entitled “From Urban Dispersion to Recentralization: Lessons from Canadian Planning Initiatives.” The authors alone are responsible for the content of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Pierre Filion

Pierre Filion is professor emeritus at the School of Planning of the University of Waterloo. His areas of research include metropolitan-scale planning, downtown areas and suburban centers, infrastructures, and emerging forms of urban development. He was co-editor of Critical Perspectives on Suburban Infrastructures (University of Toronto Press), Cities at Risk (Routledge) five editions of Canadian Cities in Transition (Oxford University Press), and Global Reflections on COVID-19 and Urban Inequalities (Policy Press). He has published close to 200 articles and book chapters. Pierre Filion has been vice-president of the Planning and Real Estate Advisory Committee of the National Capital Commission (Ottawa-Gatineau), a member of the Central Zone Panel, which contributed to the formulation of the Ontario Government Growth Plan, and a member on the International Joint Commission (on the Great Lakes) Scientific Advisory Committee.

Markus Moos

Markus Moos is Professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo. He is also a registered professional planner. His research is on the changing economies, housing markets, social structures, generational dimensions such as “youthification,” and sustainability of cities and suburbs. He is the editor of A Research Agenda for Housing (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) and co-editor, with Robert Walter-Joseph, of Still Detached and Subdivided? Suburban Ways of Living in 21st Century North America (Jovis Press, 2017).

Gary Sands

Gary Sands is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Wayne State University. In addition to Wayne State, he has taught at the University of Windsor (Ontario, Canada) and at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. His research and teaching interests have focused on housing and economic development policies and their impact urban form and the built environment. Sands was a member of the UN-Habitat Expert advisory panel on urban prosperity. He has been an advisor to government agencies at all levels, as well as community-based organizations and private sector developers. He has authored or coauthored nine books and journal special issues, more than 75 journal articles and over 200 housing market studies and research monographs. Sands holds a Master of Urban Planning degree from Wayne State University and a doctorate in Housing and Public Policy from Cornell University.