Liveblogging Sidewalk Labs’ Master Innovation and Development Plan, Entry 27: The MIDP Volume 2, The Innovations: Introduction; Chapter 1: Mobility, Parts 1-4

Posted on August 15, 2019 by bhaggart

Previous Master Innovation and Development Plan liveblog entries and relevant documents available here

At first glance, two volumes and 795 pages into a very repetitive four-volume, 1,496-page report, it doesn’t look like Volume 3 contains much that I haven’t already read. This volume discusses how Sidewalk Labs innovations will be deployed in its desired parts of the Eastern Waterfront. It is therefore different from the previous volume, which discussed how its desired parts of the Eastern Waterfront would deploy Sidewalk Labs’ innovations.

If anything, though, this Volume is a concentrated dose of what Sidewalk Labs is selling, which is a dream, not a plan. This is a Volume in which the word “could” appears no less than 687 times in 470 pages (recalling that not all of these pages have words on them). That works out to more than one “could” (and more than one implied “could not”) per page. (Fun fact: the phrase “could not” appears once, on page 450.)

Could: it’s what you say when saying “will” represents too much of a commitment.

Even more than the previous two documents, Volume 2 is an aspirational document, a Project Vision, if you will, selling things that don’t yet exist, but might! Or might not! But also might.

Moving on, much of what’s in here lies outside my competencies. I’d bet pretty good money that they’re placing too much emphasis on self-driving cars becoming a thing in their 22-year time horizon, but as to the quality of their ideas about bike lanes? I like cycling, but that’s as much of an expert as I am.

What this means is I’m probably going to speed through this Volume. [Future Blayne: That… did not happen.] I’ll note which sections are located where and highlight anything that stands out to me, but I’m going to try not to re-litigate points I’ve already made or to repeat myself. No need to pull a Sidewalk Labs.

(I’m also going to dispense with the notation of “Not listed in Table of Contents” for subsections that should have been flagged by Sidewalk Labs in this way (so readers could easily see what’s in a 1,496-page report). From here on in, you can assume that everything not labelled “Chapter” or “Part” wasn’t listed in the Table of Contents.)

Introduction (pp. 16-21)

Pages 16 and 17 repeat pages 57 and 58 from the Overview. Page 18 before the volume overview is lifted from passages from pages 59-64.

Chapter 1: Mobility (pp. 22-117)

Introduction (pp. 24-31)

New bureaucracy alert (see Dr. Natasha Tusikov’s guest post for a discussion of the proposed Waterfront Transportation Management Association, and much else besides)

to coordinate the entire mobility system, Sidewalk Labs proposes a new public entity that uses real-time traffic management tools, pricing policies, and an integrated mobility package to encourage transit, walking, cycling, and shared trips. (p. 26)

Rule 1: the longer the timeline of your predictions, the more worthless they are.

Rule 2: Independent analyses are a good idea. The analyses in this section are paid for by Sidewalk Labs. I’d like to see the City of Toronto run its own numbers on this project.

22 years into the future:

The 2041 figure assumes a fully deployed mobility system, including self-driving fleets, traffic management, and the light rail extension. As a result, Sidewalk Labs would expect very few households in the IDEA District to feel the need to own a car. (p. 30)

Questions to keep in mind

  • How confident are you that self-driving car fleets will end up working, or will end up working in the way we anticipate them today?
  • What does each of these elements (transit, self-driving cars, escooters) contribute to these projections?
  • From Table 9 (p. 29) of Mobility Appendix G, “Modelling and Traffic Analysis” (inaccurately referred to on page 31 of Volume 3 as “Modelling and Transportation Analysis,” making it difficult to locate on the Sidewalk Labs’ site, where appendices are not labelled as such in their main feed and which are not included with the main report), it looks like most people would be taking public transit.

How sensitive is the model to changes in variables (e.g., transit or parking costs, roadway speeds)?

Part 1: Expanding Public Transit (pp. 32-41)

Goal 1: Design a neighbourhood with transit first (pp. 35-39)

Goal 2: Encourage expansion through “self-financing” (pp. 40-41)

More on the proposed Waterfront Transportation Management Association

A non- profit or new government entity could be created to oversee the implementation of this self-financing proposal; its role would be to manage the funds raised, which would be required by law to be used exclusively for the light rail expansion. (p. 41)

Part 2: Enabling Walking and Cycling Year-Round (pp. 42-53)

Goal 1: Plan for a “15-minute neighbourhood” (pp. 44-45)

i.e., a “mixed-development” neighbourhood (p. 44), served by good transportation options and social infrastructure (p. 45)

Goal 2: Expand safe, comfortable walking and cycling networks (pp. 46-48)

Goal 3: Provide signal priority for walking and cycling (p. 49)

They want to adapt tech pioneered in Copenhagen to do this.

Question: Europe has a much more developed cycling culture. To what extent would Toronto’s particular cycling culture affect the effectiveness of this technology?

Goal 4: Encourage bike- share, e-bike, and other low-speed vehicle options (pp. 50-51)

Via lots of bike parking, bike-share docks, and e-scooter and e-bikes.

New regulation: Sidewalk Labs would “require all buildings to create a minimum of one bike space per every two building residents and one bike space for every four employees.”

Goal 5: Facilitate all- weather walking and cycling with heated pavement (pp. 52-53)

heated pavement in some sidewalks and bike lanes to make walking and cycling more attractive all year. (p. 52)

To conserve energy, heated pavement would connect to real-time weather forecasts programmed to automatically “power on” three or four hours in advance of a storm. (p. 52)

In Quayside, Sidewalk Labs plans to deploy 1,200 square metres of heated sidewalk and pedestrian zones and 1,590 square metres of heated bike paths. (p. 52)

Part 3: Harnessing New Mobility and Self-Driving Technology (pp. 54-

The first six pages are all about self-driving technology. It’s pretty obvious that Google wants to use Toronto and Sidewalk Labs to make it a reality.

And it’s not just about the technology. Sidewalk Labs/Google is looking to change laws and policies to enable this technology. As this report correctly notes:

Much of this outcome depends not on the technology itself, but on policy for how it is used. (p. 55)

Sidewalk Labs frames their proposal in terms of “people-first street designs” (p. 55), but these are “people-first” in the sense of designing roads and rules to accommodate self-driving cars so they won’t kill people. This project could equally be labelled “self-driving cars first.”

Sidewalk Labs supports research and stakeholder engagement initiatives that aim to improve the collective understanding of the effects of self-driving vehicles on urban transportation systems and to catalyze the consensus-building process to explore potential regulatory models. (p. 55)

Probably not on the table: just banning cars from roads and switching to better public transit. And notice that there’s nothing in this report about researching innovative public transit.

How the self-driving car bet drives MIDP projected outcomes

With the arrival of self-driving technology, Sidewalk Labs’ new mobility plan would lead to roughly 7 percent of all trips occurring by ride-hail options if applied at the full scale of the IDEA District and coordinated with the city… . (p. 55)

And all this for a technology that won’t be mainstream until 2035, at the earliest. (p. 58)

See Rule 1 above.

Goal 1: Encourage shared use of ride-hail services (pp. 60-62)

Its effects seem to depend a lot on the mainstreaming of self-driving technology. We’ll see… in 2035, I guess.

New fees (1): Dynamic curb pricing

dynamic curb pricing would apply to all vehicle services and vary based on congestion in pick-up or drop-off spaces. These charges would include a low one-time charge to access the curb space and higher time-based charges for vehicles that wait longer than five minutes at the curb.

The goal is to encourage people to consider alternative trip options or to share a ride and split the cost, as well as for vehicles to use the curb quickly and move on. Passengers who prefer not to pay a curb charge could be picked up or dropped off for free at a designated underground drop-off and pick-up area with access to numerous transport options. (p. 62)

New fees (2): Per-kilometre pricing

impose a per-kilometre charge on ride-hail vehicles using the Sidewalk Toronto project’s specially designed local streets, if necessary to encourage people to share rides and to discourage operators from allowing vehicles to cruise streets without passengers.

A new organization with taxation powers

The (here unnamed) Waterfront Transportation Management Association would be responsible for “proposing and administering” this tax on ride-hailing vehicles. Sidewalk Labs doesn’t want it to apply to people with disabilities, the elderly and low-income groups.

Far-future savings projections: The least reliable savings projections

At the full scale of the IDEA District, Sidewalk Labs estimates that the increased convenience and affordability of self-driving fleets [which, recall, that Sidewalk Labs itself doesn’t imagine will be here until 2035] would result in nearly 7 percent of trips occurring by hailed rides. (p. 62)

Goal 2: Provide car- share and parking options for the occasional private car trip (pp. 63-64)

Goal 3: Make all trip options available in discounted mobility packages (pp. 65-67)

This would include “a TTC monthly pass, an unlimited Bike Share Toronto membership, access to electric scooters and other low-speed vehicles, and credits for rides with ride- hail or car-share providers” for $270 per month. (p. 65)

The Graphic on page 67 says that a two-person household that owns car could save $4,000 per year ($333 per month) under their system. But what about the majority of downtown Torontonians who don’t own a car: how much would they save?

Part 4: Reimagining City Deliveries and Freight (pp. 68-83)

Goal 1: Establish a neighbourhood logistics hub for delivery, waste, storage, and borrowing services (pp. 74-76)

Waste from three streams (organics, recycling, D and landfill) would be transported via pneumatic tubes to the hub, making it the only neighbourhood stop for garbage trucks. (p. 70)

That would be the same hub that would be processing parcels. I am by no means an expert in this field, but I’m not sure how much sense it is to put your post office and garbage depot in the same underground cavern.  Which would also double (triple) as residents’ off-site storage lockers. And (quadruple) as a “borrowing library” for tools or “sound systems.”

What could go wrong? The cited Dutch example apparently only handles “clean waste collection.” (p. 74)

Way back when Sidewalk Labs mentioned this plan in the Overview, I noted that they didn’t present any numbers describing the cost of having trucks deliver goods. They highlight the inconvenience of trucks using roads, but that doesn’t help us decide whether their proposed solution is an efficient use of scarce public resources.

A fee-charging library?

I had also previously, in reading the overview, assumed that even though Sidewalk Labs refers to a “Library of Things” they were probably imaging people renting, not borrowing, these tools. Two volumes later:

The library could house these items and rent them out for a fee. (p. 76)

Goal 2: Design a smart container for last-mile shipping (pp. 77-79)

Another chance to get in on the ground floor of a new industry standard. Sidewalk Labs would develop this technology.

Question: How will the benefits be shared with Torontonians and Canadians if this becomes a standard? Would it be a proprietary design?

Goal 3: Deploy electric, self-driving delivery dollies (pp. 80-81)

Sidewalk Labs does not plan to create self-driving delivery dollies itself but rather plans to work with third-party vendors to identify or develop a design that meets the container’s specifications. (p. 80)

Goal 4: Connect underground delivery tunnels into buildings (pp. 82-83)

Sidewalk Labs proposes to require that each building be designed to connect with the tunnel system so self-driving delivery dollies carrying smart containers can enter. These dollies would have the ability to take freight elevators to com- mon spaces, including first-floor lockers for package delivery. (p. 82)

Question: What if self-driving dolly technology doesn’t end up working as desired?

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Liveblogging Sidewalk Labs’ Master Innovation and Development Plan, Entry 26: The MIDP Volume 1, The Plans; Chapter 3: Economic Development (III): Part 3: Measuring Impact; Part 4: Exploring Economic Impact Further into the Future

Posted on August 14, 2019 by bhaggart

On substantive analysis, and some incredibly sloppy data reporting that raises questions about Sidewalk Labs’ quality control and makes this former StatsCan editor (The Daily and Infomat, publications, back in the day) very sad.

Previous Master Innovation and Development Plan liveblog entries and relevant documents available here

This is it! The final post for Volume 1! Only … sigh … two more volumes to go.

Part 3: Measuring Impact (pp. 494-503)

At this point, over 70 pages into Chapter 3, what stands out about a chapter that is supposed to be all about “Economic Development,” is the lack of actual or sophisticated economic analysis. Most of it is a restatement of the swell proposals Sidewalk Labs has made elsewhere, in the overview and in Volume 1. Sidewalk Labs has touted its urbanMetrics’ report, but there’s not much of urbanMetrics in here. Instead, the preceding economic analysis – such as it was – was based mostly on anecdotes.

All this to say that the chapter so far has been 70 pages of filler. What do the final ten pages hold?

Both more and less than what we’ve already seen.

In a just world, these ten pages would have stood on their own (also the preceding text would not have repeated every single point a dozen times). These ten pages detail the findings of the urbanMetrics report (almost all of which we’ve already seen), but they don’t break out the individual contributors to growth (e.g., the timber factory).

The analysis is at such a high level (and is dependent on Sidewalk Labs’ own data and projections) that they don’t help us answer the big questions, such as: what do the individual components of this project contribute to the overall picture, both statically and dynamically?

On a related point, urbanMetrics’s report is an analysis of Sidewalk Labs’ best-case scenario, in which nothing at all goes wrong. So, these numbers should be treated as the absolute upper bound of what is possible. Actual results will almost certainly be lower than what’s predicted here.

This section brings us to just over halfway through the entire report. As hard as it is to believe, we’re closer to the end than the beginning. Right now, the thought that there might be life beyond the MIDP is the only think that keeps me going.

Impact 1: Spurring the creation of 44,000 direct jobs and 93,000 total jobs (pp. 496-499; not listed in Table of Contents)

I’m just going to be reporting the numbers here. I’m not going to be putting them in a larger context regarding whether they’re realistic (i.e., the proportion of jobs predicted versus actual job growth). That would be very useful to do, but I’d like this project to end before the sun explodes.

For those of you who want to do that, use your best judgment. If Sidewalk Labs claims that the area will contribute a disproportionate amount to either job creation or GDP, that’ll tell you that their numbers aren’t trustworthy.

So, here’s what urbanMetrics’ model, using Sidewalk Labs-provided inputs:

  • 44,100 direct jobs in the entire Eastern Waterfront by 2040, a large proportion of which would be in professional and scientific and technical services
    • 2,500 industrial jobs (light manufacturing, transportation)
    • “Population-based services,” an odd term encompassing everything from doctors to retail and which doesn’t seem to be used in the urbanMetrics report: 12,000 jobs
    • Knowledge-based industries, which they define as “technology, finance, professional services, and creative fields, including the film industry”: 29,000
  • 49,000 more jobs by 2040 throughout the country.
  • an average wage increase to $70,000 (IDEA District), compared to projected $60,000 (Eastern Waterfront? – I wasn’t able to find these specific figures in the urbanMetrics report, but I might’ve missed it. It sure would’ve been nice if Sidewalk Labs had provided some page references. This number seems to come from a simple averaging of current average industry incomes (p. 497), so it might not even be mentioned in the report.)

A couple of things (leaving the heavy lifting to others):

I tried breaking out exactly what types of employment Sidewalk Labs believes they will be generating, because it’s a bit weird to lump doctors and sales clerks into the same category. What follows is from the urbanMetrics report (p. 51). It includes 2,500 “work at home” jobs that are excluded from the 44,100 number reported by Sidewalk Labs (44,200 in the actual report):

Assumed Employment Composition by Industry, by 2040, Sidewalk Labs Version

Sector Employment
Goods-producing sector           1,200
Professional, Scientific and Technical Services         14,000
Information and Cultural Industries           7,000
Management of Companies and Enterprises           4,700
Finance, Insurance and Real Estate           5,800
Health Care and Social Assistance           2,300
Accommodation and Food Services           2,300
Retail, Wholesale, Transportation and Warehousing           2,300
Administrative, Support, Waste Management and Remediation           2,300
All Other Services           4,700
Total         46,600

Source: urbanMetrics Inc., Sidewalk Toronto Economic Impact Analysis, p. 51.

For some, this might be a bit too inside-baseball, but it’s best practice to ensure that others can figure out how you calculated your numbers (#transparency). Using a composite category, “population-based services,” once in the report, on a single page, without making clear what the underlying components of this category actually are, and reporting two different employment numbers (a total at-home-work-excluding and a disaggregation that includes at-home work) isn’t cool. It’s sloppy. If you’re a company asking people to give you a multi-billion-dollar contract like this one, raising questions about basic competence is not a good look.

Impact 2: Nearly seven times the potential annual GDP impact (pp. 500-501; not listed in Table of Contents)

The Toronto firm urbanMetrics estimates that the growing global profile of the IDEA District could generate an estimated $14.2 billion in economic output for Canada each year (GDP), including $11.8 billion in Toronto, which represents a more than six-fold increase in value added to the Canadian economy compared to status quo development by 2040. (p. 500)

So, I used to work copyediting tables at Statistics Canada.

Sidewalk Labs: you have a typo in the second column of row 1 on page 501: $11,769,431,015 should be $11,769,431,016.

Moving on, this $11.8 billion of annual GDP for Toronto would be equivalent to about 3.5% of its 2014 GDP.

Impact 3: The largest city building project in North America (pp. 502-503; not listed in Table of Contents)

This section highlights the project’s effects on construction. All I’ll note that it’s depending on an unproven technology – factory-made timber skyscrapers.

Part 4: Exploring Economic Impact Further into the Future (pp. 504-515)

This section continues the imagineering, wondering what could be done if these developments led to the development of even more waterfront land, with a brief detour into the Bloor Viaduct.

One final note: the further out one’s predictions go, the less reliable they become. Fittingly, the world “could” does a lot of work in Part 4.

And with that, we’re finished Volume 1: The Plans. Next up: Volume 2: The Innovations. I’m hoping for less repetition because it would be nice to read something substantive. But also more repetition, because this project is soul-destroying.

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Liveblogging Sidewalk Labs’ Master Innovation and Development Plan, Entry 25: The MIDP Volume 1, The Plans; Chapter 3: Economic Development (II): Part 2: Sparking a Cluster in Urban Innovation

Posted on August 13, 2019 by bhaggart

Sidewalk Labs provides some reasons why they need all this special treatment. And more. Always more.

Previous Master Innovation and Development Plan liveblog entries and relevant documents available here

We’re still on Chapter 3 of Volume 1, so let’s get right to it.

Part 2: Sparking a Cluster in Urban Innovation (pp. 460-493)

Introduction (pp. 462-465; not listed in Table of Contents)

In which Sidewalk Labs makes a pitch for urban innovation as a growing economic sector (p. 464).

Strategy 1: Invest in a cluster-based approach (pp. 466-469; not listed in Table of Contents)

Here at least we get Sidewalk Labs’ response to my earlier question about why they want to build in an area in which Sidewalk Labs controls everything, from the land to the laws. I’m not convinced, but at least it’s a response.

Easier to prototype:

urban innovation often requires integration with the built environment, increasing the cost of prototyping, requiring greater coordination among more stakeholders, and making it difficult to test and commercialize early-stage concepts. It can be far more difficult to prototype a new system for flexible, rearrangeable walls in ground-floor retail space, than it is to test a new app on iOS. (p. 468)

But do you need to rearrange an entire neighbourhood to do it?

The tech-law connection:

urban innovation often requires close coordination with government and existing policy.

Sort of. Certainly they both affect each other, but testing doesn’t necessarily require that a city change its laws.

Take an innovation that is focused on creating more sustainable and cost-efficient street lights that provide brighter and safer night-time environments while using less power. Innovators often must coordinate with formal or informal authorities, even for early testing, to secure necessary input, buy-in, authorization, or permits. Coordination becomes more complicated and time-intensive as innovators move from testing to scale and as new stakeholders introduce additional constraints or complexities.

There are two problems with this example. First, it treats innovations as if they are completely neutral rather than something that can yield either positive or negative results.

Second, it assumes that laws that slow down innovations are an inefficiency to be overcome, when they often also protect existing public goods or interests (which may themselves be positive or negative).  For example, we would all be better off if we had had laws on the book to restrict or outlaw Google’s and Facebook’s innovations regarding targeted advertising. This innovation has made Facebook’s business (social media) sustainable, but at the cost of destabilizing democratic society and has contributed to an actual genocide.

Real-world consequences:

unlike other disciplines where innovators are encouraged to fail fast, urban innovation can have higher stakes. Changes to construction technologies that inadvertently compromise structural integrity are not acceptable — unsafe buildings have significant real-world consequences. The same holds true for self-driving vehicle testing and other innovations that operate in public space. (pp. 468-469)

This is the weirdest justification for ditching existing laws. These laws are in place to ensure that urban innovations (say, as they relate to building codes) are as safe as possible, and that unproven, only-beta-tested technologies don’t come on the market.

It’s doubly weird in this case, since Sidewalk Labs isn’t asking to create a Potemkin Safety Village (Ottawa Safety Village RIP) where it will be simulating a city; it wants to build an actual city in which real people will live. This is exactly the situation in which you want strict laws that restrict innovations, especially from companies based in a Silicon Valley culture, in which you can always fix the shittily made app after it’s gone to market.

To put it another way, Sidewalk Labs should be seeking to work within Toronto’s existing regulatory framework, not seeking to change it as it sees fit.

Strategy 2: Build on Toronto’s existing innovation ecosystem to grow the field (pp. 470-473; not listed in Table of Contents)

They would draw on university researchers (p. 470) in particular, although this section is more of a statement of where things stand in terms of tech employment and government support than a description of how they would build on the “existing innovation economy.”

Strategy 3: Create the physical, digital, and policy conditions for urban innovation (pp. 474-476; not listed in Table of Contents)

A restatement of its commitment to flexible physical spaces (in terms of buildings, roads and outdoor spaces) (p. 474) Also a restatement about data governance and connectivity (p. 475).

And a restatement about how it wants to redo “existing urban regulations and policies — such as zoning, building code, and automobile regulations” (p. 475):

These policies — designed around important objectives, such as protecting the public from industrial hazards or over-developing attractive residential areas — now sometimes limit the ability to find creative solutions to the very same problems they attempted to mitigate. Today’s digital capabilities enable these policies to achieve their intended outcomes in more flexible ways. (p. 475)

Although see my previous comments just about on why innovation is never a good in and of itself. Especially when you’re talking about an actual community filled with actual people. Rule changes are fine, but we have processes for changing them: go through democratically elected representatives. It’s bad form to try an end-run around these processes via a vague development proposal in concert with an organization with limited democratic accountability.

Make your case, out in the open, to Toronto City Council. Or the Province of Ontario. Or the Government of Canada.

Turning these rules over to a self-interested developer would be like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. It’s bad governance.

Strategy 4: Launch an Urban Innovation Institute as a portal for learning and research (p. 477-487; not listed in Table of Contents)

In which Sidewalk Labs (again; some of this text is repeated from p. 307 of this very Volume) make the case for a Google-linked, inter/multidisciplinary institute that could draw upon the data produced by the people and infrastructure in the IDEA District. It sees the Urban Innovation Institute eventually supporting collaborative degree programs with other institutions (universities? colleges?), and it envisions a close collaboration with Toronto-based institutions. It includes several imaginings of how all this could work (four out of 11 pages are devoted to these short stories, complemented by drawings that dwarf the actual text on these pages) – argumentation via sales job.

Anyways, the Urban Innovation Institute would pursue technological advances as well as governance approaches. In other words, it’s about policy and tech. Keeping in mind that technology isn’t neutral, two guesses about the outcomes its policy analyses would favour. As former prime minister Brian Mulroney once said, “You dance with the one who brung ya.”

Strategy 5: Establish a new venture fund for local, early-stage enterprises (pp. 488-489; not listed in Table of Contents)

In which mention is again made of Sidewalk Labs’ $10 million proposed investment into said fund.

With more advanced options for early-stage venture funding, Sidewalk Labs aims to help contribute to the region’s ability to retain talent and IP locally. (p. 489)

As I think I’ve already noted, the issue here isn’t location of the actual workers; it’s who controls the intellectual property. Simply developing local talent does nothing to ensure that intellectual property will stay in the country, especially when you have a foreign company at the centre of your cluster – who do you think will be the joint senior partner with many of these companies that Sidewalk Labs will be identifying?

If someone could explain to me how Sidewalk Labs’ plan would help to keep intellectual property in Canada, I’d love to hear from them.

Strategy 6: Benefit Toronto companies and catalyze new ones (pp. 490-492; not listed in Table of Contents)

In which Sidewalk Labs makes the case that projects undertaken in the IDEA district would contribute to existing Canadian/Ontario programs (e.g., on self-driving cars, cleantech)

That’s enough for now. See you in the next post, for Part 3, Chapter 3, Volume 1.

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Liveblogging Sidewalk Labs’ Master Innovation and Development Plan, Entry 24: The MIDP Volume 1, The Plans; Chapter 3: Economic Development: Introduction; Part 1: Accelerating Development

Posted on August 12, 2019 by bhaggart

Previous Master Innovation and Development Plan liveblog entries and relevant documents available here

Chapter 3 of Volume 1! And we’re coming up on the halfway point of the report, which is something, right?

Introduction (pp. 422-427; not listed in Table of Contents)

In which Sidewalk Labs reiterates its plan for kickstarting economic development. Note that this all is focused on its desired wider waterfront, not Quayside. The plan:

First, Sidewalk Labs plans to help boost general economic growth by accelerating development across the underutilized areas of the IDEA District. (p. 423)

This will be accomplished by:

  • “upfront investments in critical infrastructure, such as light rail transit” (paid for by the City)
  • bringing Google Canada’s branch headquarters to town, along with the Urban Innovation Insittue
  • “people-first planning” to bring people to the district
  • Which will all create “an ‘expanded downtown’ area capable of supporting new and existing industries.” (p. 423)

Second, Sidewalk Labs plans to help catalyze a cluster focused on urban innovation with the potential to spark a new economic engine. (p. 424)

Toronto as digital export processing zone:

This approach involves establishing the IDEA District as a designated zone subject to a special set of regulatory and policy tools to promote innovation and accelerate development.

This is the same type of policy that developing countries like Mexico adopt in order to convince transnational corporations to set up manufacturing facilities: lax labour and environmental standards in exchange for low-wage jobs. It has the effect of locking these countries into a subordinate position in the global economy, making it harder for them to rise up the global value chain. It is not the type of policy pursued by strong, economically vibrant countries.

Calculating the economic impact

Sidewalk Labs also touts the urbanMetrics consulting firm’s economic analysis that underlies this chapter. The report is part of the MIDP Technical Appendix; I covered it in Entry 20. The report is based on statistics and projections provided by Sidewalk Labs.

It compares two possible scenarios, a status quo and one in which the MIDP proposal is implemented in full. In each case, it breaks out a Quayside-only development and a full-area development.

Unfortunately, as I noted in that previous post, the urbanMetrics report does not contemplate anything other than the best-case scenario, and so we have no idea how this proposal would develop if, say, Google decided to stay home, or if planners decided not to approve the construction of timber skyscrapers.

Not pursuing any alternative scenarios means that we can’t break out, say, the relative importance of bringing Google to town (my guess is if it’s not there, most of the benefits from this proposal would not materialize), including both direct and indirect effects.

Part 1: Accelerating Development (pp. 428-459)

Introduction (p. 430; not listed in Table of Contents)

Strategy 1: Unlock the waterfront through infrastructure investments (pp. 431-437; not listed in Table of Contents)

In which Sidewalk Labs once again makes the hard sell for a light-rail line. Despite an up-front note that the infrastructure cost (utilities, energy, public transit) to outfit the IDEA district would likely be over $3 billion, or more than $4.5 billion if the entire eastern waterfront is covered (p. 431), this section is all about making the case (again) for light rail.

Sure, it would cost the city at least $1.2 billion (p. 434), but financing and building it all at once would be worth it, they say, citing examples from other cities, including London’s Canary Wharf, a reference that will doubtlessly bemuse Canadians of a certain age.

Left undiscussed is the remaining $1.8 billion-plus of infrastructure spending, which presumably would also come out of ratepayers’ pockets, one way or another. More proof that this is more a sales brochure than an actual planning document. Otherwise, their discussion of infrastructure investments would have discussed all infrastructure.

Strategy 2: Anchor waterfront growth with a new Google campus (pp. 438-443; not listed in Table of Contents)

In this section, what stood out to me is this claim:

Based on its impact in other neighbourhoods in cities around the world, described more on Page 441, Google’s arrival on the waterfront has the potential to catalyze economic growth, attracting firms of all sizes and a diverse workforce, while contributing to the growth of Toronto’s existing innovation ecosystem. (p. 439)

Perhaps, but why rely on comparative anecdotes and not the company that you’ve commissioned to analyze this proposal? For now, I’ll note again that their urbanMetrics report doesn’t break out Google’s individual impact on Toronto’s economy. And notice how this section – in a report that doesn’t shy away from making grandiose predictions – doesn’t provide any predictions about Google’s effect on Toronto.

This section is much less than meets the eye in terms of providing substantive analysis.

Strategy 3: Attract talent and jobs with complete communities (pp. 444-447; not listed in Table of Contents)

This section merely repeats the proposals outlined elsewhere in the report. I’m still waiting for the economic analysis. This is padding.

Strategy 4: Support new and existing industries with an “expanded downtown” (pp. 448-451; not listed in Table of Contents)

See above.

Page 451 is a chart of the predicted number of jobs this plan would produce. That’s the extent of the economic analysis in this section so far.

Strategy 5: Plan for prosperity with equity (pp. 452-459; not listed in Table of Contents)

More repeated commitments, with several interesting commitments. Although I’ll start by noting that it’s kind of weird to include a recycled pitch for its proposed mass-timber factor in a section about equity (pp. 458-459). And that there’s nothing in here that draws on the urbanMetrics report.

Okay, let’s go:

Sidewalk Labs plans to provide workforce development opportunities to ensure the local workforce is equipped with the skills needed to succeed in a 21st-century economy. (p. 454)

And:

Sidewalk Labs’ workforce strategy aims to support Torontonians of all ages and backgrounds so that they are trained to compete, and remain competitive in the 21st-century economy. Sidewalk Labs also wants to help employers — from tiny startups to major corporations — fill their talent needs. (p. 455)

There seem to be two separate promises here. There’s a “workforce strategy,” which could simply be a banal statement that there will be lots of different types of jobs in their new districts.

And there’s Sidewalk Labs’ promise to create yet another bureaucracy, Sidewalk Works:

This strategy begins by establishing a proposed non-profit entity, Sidewalk Works, to help those who are currently underrepresented in the tech sector prepare for jobs in the new economy. Working closely with qualified partners, Sidewalk Works would curate and influence skills training to meet real-time employer needs, recruit across the city to broaden workforce participation, and provide access points to the urban innovation economy — all supported by cutting-edge digital tools. It would also champion equity in the tech sector by convening employers in the IDEA District across industries to identify and address common challenges, build their capacity to support and retain diverse candidates, and drive equity through economic opportunity. (p. 455)

Part of Sidewalk Works would be a service called Talent Connect, a “talent concierge” that can provide curated access to top-tier talent and assistance with navigating government-funded services and post-secondary co-op and work placement programs. Talent Connect would be available to all member firms operating in the IDEA District but would likely be of particular value to small firms that may not have dedicated human resources staff. (p. 457)

As has been par for the course so far in this document, this is more idea than proposal or plan. There are a lot of “coulds” in here. What type of partners?  Sidewalk Labs mentions many people it could work with, in a way that recalls an undergraduate methods assignment where they’re throwing everything against the wall to see what will stick.

Who would run it? Who will pay for it? How long, and to what extent, would Sidewalk Labs be involved in it?

Contractors requirements

Contractors would be required to provide opportunities for mentorships, intern- ships, and other work-integrated learning opportunities, as well as to consider qualified candidates from targeted communities first for professional, administrative, and technical positions — an approach known as “first source” hiring. (p. 456)

Sidewalk Labs proposes to require that contractors provide opportunities for mentorships, internships, and other work-integrated learning opportunities and implement a first-source hiring approach for professional, administrative, and technical positions. (p. 458)

I have questions: Would this just be for the projects Sidewalk Labs directly controls, or would it be for the entire district? If the latter, should Sidewalk Labs be allowed to dictate these types of things?

Google as educator

Sidewalk Works would also work to connect tenant employers with graduates of an entry-level information-technology (IT) certification course called the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, a program developed by Google and Coursera to help non-traditional candidates begin careers in technology. This course is a component of “Grow with Google,” an initiative to help Canadians acquire the digital skills needed to get jobs or grow businesses. (pp. 456-457)

Google: Creating the Google talent Google will need in the Google century.

Also: Sidewalk Labs can’t make promises like this and seriously claim to not to be a Google subsidiary.

Noted: Other promises

Sidewalk Labs plans to build on the Waterfront Toronto Employment Initiative, working with Construction Connections (a unique construction-sector workforce development program man- aged by the city and the province) and Toronto Employment and Social Services, to target at least 10 percent of construction hours for racialized youth, women, and Indigenous people.

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Liveblogging Sidewalk Labs’ Master Innovation and Development Plan, Entry 23: The MIDP Volume 1, The Plans; Chapter 2: The River District, Part 2: Scaling Urban Innovations; The Future Can Start Now

Posted on August 11, 2019 by bhaggart

Previous Master Innovation and Development Plan liveblog entries and relevant documents available here

Let’s get right to it, shall we?

Part 2: Scaling Urban Innovations (pp. 348-407)

Padding alert

  • Sixty pages.
  • Three full-page photos.
  • Four full-page pull quotes.
  • Five full-page title pages.

Part 2.1: Mobility (pp. 350-367; not listed in Table of Contents)

Accelerating mass transit extensions across the eastern waterfront (pp. 352-355; not listed in Table of Contents)

In which the pitch is made for light rail as a means to build at scale the infrastructure discussed in the Quayside chapter.

As before, they suggest self-financing, on the assumption that it “create enough value to offset the cost of building [the] expansion” (p. 352). Only the “River District,” not Quayside, provides sufficient density to justify this “self-financing” (i.e., borrowing against the anticipated extra revenues the project will spur).

Creating new neighbourhoods with people-first street networks (pp. 356-361)

Again, an expansion of their Quayside ideas and why scale is needed for them to unlock the majestic awesomeness of their plans.

Big assumptions:

That self-driving vehicles — often called autonomous vehicles — will be both safe and commercially ubiquitous available for rides by roughly 2035, and that smart planning can harness their potential to be better neighbours for pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit user. (pp. 356-358)

As I’ve said before, I would not take this bet. At the very least, I would not build a multi-billion-dollar development around an eventuality that is so far out of my control and so far down the road (pun maybe intended due to sheer exhaustion).

Also worth re-highlighting that, “people-first street networks” is quite vague. Strictly speaking, Sidewalk Labs is promoting different types of roads for different forms of mobility (cars, transit, pedestrians, cyclists). “People-first street networks” (p. 360).

Expanding opportunities for cyclists (pp. 362-363; not listed in Table of Contents)

Dedicated bike paths and bikeways.

A neighbourhood moved by new mobility (pp. 364-367)

Your at-scale mobility benefits:

  • “Discounted mobility packages” compared to the higher price people would pay if Sidewalk Labs only controls Quayside. (p. 364)
  • And yet more on self-driving cars (p. 365).
  • You only get the self-supporting freight system mentioned in the Quayside chapter if you give Sidewalk Labs the River District as well. Reason: “It is not financially feasible” (p. 367) – one wouldn’t be able to make enough money off of it.
  • Quality of life: If policies are adopted only at Quayside, the surrounding districts would continue to be noisy and polluting, affecting Quayside’s quality of life. But if you control the land around it… (p. 368)
  • Similar parking policy as the Quayside proposal. (p. 368)
  • New Bureaucracy alert! The proposed Waterfront Transportation Management Association, at scale, could engage in active traffic management (read: constant surveillance of traffic) to “not only optimize the available road and curb space but also apply pricing to encourage shared rides during congested periods.” (p. 368)

Part 2.2: Public Realm (pp. 368-379; not listed in Table of Contents)

Creating an expanded, varied, and active public realm network (pp. 368-372; not listed in Table of Contents)

Basically the Quayside plan at scale, where they will be “more affordable.” (p. 371)

And would include “a new 30-hectare nature preserve that functions like a central park for the entire River District…” (p. 371).

An expanded ground-floor network would create new economic, creative, and programming possibilities (pp. 373-379)

Already covered in the Quayside chapter, although it is depending on the private sector to take up its preferred models. Includes three case studies.

My question: to what extent would private-sector developers be forced into adopting these models based on Sidewalk Labs’ control over standards and rules in these neighbourhoods?

Part 2.3: Buildings and Housing (pp. 380-389; not listed in Table of Contents)

Catalyzing a new mass timber industry and construction supply chain (pp. 381-383; not listed in Table of Contents)

In which the case for mass timber at the scale of the “River District” is made, because Quayside is too small for it to be financially viable.

It involves the creation of a “new supply chain” based in Ontario (p. 381).

The payoff: “accelerating timelines, improving predictability, reducing costs, minimizing neighbourhood disruption from work sites, and yielding a healthier, more sustainable, and stunning built environment” (pp. 381-382). Recall that the “healthier claim, from the Quayside chapter, is based on the assumption that it’s pleasant to look at a wooden skyscraper.

As for the worksite claim, I just figured out, thanks to page 383 and the fact that I just finished playing the second epilogue in Red Dead Redemption 2 (ultra-minor spoiler ahead), that they’re proposing wooden pre-cut skyscrapers! (I got a silver in that particular mission.)

So, if you’re keeping track, the two biggest parts of Sidewalk Labs’ proposal – bringing Google to town and timber skyscrapers – will only work if Waterfront Toronto buys into the whole project. Sidewalk Labs has taken the “Quayside on its own” option off the table, if it ever really considered it.

Beyond that, we’ve already heard their pitch in this area. Let’s move on.

Achieving new levels of housing affordability, choice, and inclusivity (pp. 384-389)

Here, again, we’re told that if you truly want to capture all the benefits of Sidewalk Labs’ affordable-housing plan, you need to go River District big.

Here’s something interesting: this affordable housing can be provided through:

  • “the increased value of public land due to factory-built timber construction” ($639 million);
  • “a condo resale fee” ($321 million);
  • “new value captured by more efficient unit design” (which they call “affordability by design”) ($475 million). (p. 384)

In other words, they’re betting on higher publicly owned land values because developers will be able to build more with less and will be thus willing to pay more for the land.

They’re also betting that condo owners will be cool with a new resale tax.

And that the timber play will work out in terms of the technologies and required regulatory approvals.

And that they can shave a significant amount off of the normal cost of building residential units via Murphy Beds etc. at scale. (For what little it’s worth, “Affordability by design” reminds me of IKEA furniture.)

Or to rephrase again, they’re betting that nothing will go wrong in any of these (I’d like to see an independent engineering review of these “more efficient unit” designs). If any of them don’t happen, their housing affordability plan will be in trouble.

Part 2.4: Sustainability (pp. 390-403; not listed in Table of Contents)

Achieving climate positivity requires bold solutions only possible at scale (pp. 391-399; not listed in Table of Contents)

The argument – and stop me if you’ve heard this one: For climate positive development, you have to develop the River District. Again, the issue is economic feasibility (presumably in terms of Sidewalk Labs’ bottom line? Because if it’s socially worth doing, you can make a case to fund it out of general tax revenue):

these initiatives proposed are not economically feasible to deploy in Quayside unless they are part of a comprehensive approach that spans a large enough geographic area to support inventing, implementing, and operating this entirely new ecosystem of sustainable infrastructure. (p. 391, emphasis added)

The costs in question: “infrastructure, … designing, building and installing digital technologies to manage these new systems” (p. 393).

Cost in sticking just to Quayside: $19 million to keep Quayside energy bills in line wit hthe rest of Toronto.

They need scale for (pp. 393-394):

  • Increasing transportation options
  • To reach an all-eelctirc mobility system
  • To make full electricification affordable
  • To reduce energy demand (via energy-efficient buildings)
  • To design an advanced power grid
  • To develop a thermal grid

Regulation-relevant:  Sidewalk Labs would like the City to move toward developing
“operational energy targets based on real-time metering for new buildings — not on pre-construction designs.” These would be based on an energy auditing tool Sidewalk Labs would like to develop (but hasn’t yet).

River district is required to: “help to accumulate a critical mass of building data, leading to powerful insights that can inform building design and enable new approaches to energy use regulation.” (p. 395)

Also promised: “an anaerobic waste digestion facility” (p. 396). Sidewalk Labs also wants to “partner with the city’s Toronto Water division to extend the proposed thermal grid infrastructure to tap into the waste heat generated at Ashbridges [Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant], with a commitment not to impact the plant’s operations.”

I don’t know anything about such things, so I’ll leave them to others to examine. 

An opportunity to use waste as a resource (pp. 400-401; not listed in Table of Contents)

It promises more efficient recycling, including the construction of a local materials recovery facility (MRF), which only works… at scale.

And that cool real-time feedback recycling system that Sidewalk Labs promised with Quayside? Well, “Quayside is too small to support its own MRF… .” As a result, its recycling would leave the area, and its waste would be recycled (or not, as is often the case) as it is today, which is often not great or not at all.

An expanded public realm could minimize the need for grey stormwater infrastructure (pp. 402-403; not listed in Table of Contents)

At scale.

New bureaucracy alert: The Open Space Alliance would collect an upfront green infrastructure fee from developers to manage green infrastructure that would reduce the size and cost of stormwater infrastructure. Again, such proposals are beyond my competence, but in terms of bureaucracy, the question to ask is, what capabilities does the Open Space Alliance need to operate this infrastructure? As Dr. Natasha Tusikov’s overview of Sidewalk Labs’ various proposed new bureaucracies indicates, the Open Space Alliance is being asked to do quite a lot.

Part 2.5: Urban Innovation (pp. 404-407; not listed in Table of Contents)

From the Time Before, that half-remembered era before my life was subsumed into this cursed report, I dimly recall that Sidewalk Labs proudly trumpeted that it wanted to build the first city “from the internet up.” Sidewalk Labs CEO Daniel L. Doctoroff used to say as much. What’s more, the phrase appears no less than ten times in the part of Sidewalk Labs’ response to Waterfront Toronto’s Request for Proposals. Waterfront Toronto was obviously impressed; it hired Sidewalk Labs to develop Quayside, after all.

Quayside was to be the digital city of the future.

Which makes it odd that not only is Sidewalk Labs no longer using the phrase “from the internet up” – in this report’s 1,496 pages it appears not at all – but that it spends so little space discussing its digital plan. A mere three pages of this 60-page section are devoted to digital issues.

Sidewalk Labs is a Google company. Its competitive advantage isn’t building materials (covered here in a nine-page section) or cars (covered here in a 17-page section). It’s data and connectivity.

Still, what’s here? A promise of ubiquitous connectivity and standardized mounts, an “Urban USB port.” Digital services catalyzing the ecosystem (not mentioned: It will probably help that Google is here.) Open data standards (who sets the standard?)

Did I mention that these will only work at scale?

The proposed mount requires significant geographic distribution to gain the widespread adoption needed for device manufacturers (such as Wi-Fi antenna producers) to incorporate the standard into their own designs, just as existing USB ports needed to prove their worth before laptop and phone manufacturers made them standard features. The River District would provide the necessary scale for development and adoption of the standardized mount. (p. 405)

Question: Is the claim that a small Toronto neighbourhood provides sufficient scale for the adoption of such a standard? It seems… tiny in the context of the whole wide world.

One last bit

The Urban Data Trust should be launched in Quayside, where it could begin to work through use cases. Over the longer term, once the entity has benefited from many use cases in Quayside and certain parts of the River District, Sidewalk Labs expects that the Urban Data Trust could have broader coverage. (p. 407)

Seeming to privilege Quayside makes a virtue of the necessity of appearing to have a separate Quayside plan. Of course the Urban Data Trust, should it come to pass, would be launched in Quayside, because Quayside would be the first part of the Waterfront development plan, and it would be the first to collect data. This is no promise at all.

The Future Can Start Now (pp. 408-415)

More public relations content. I’m done. See you for Chapter 3, Economic Development.

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