Liveblogging Sidewalk Labs’ Master Innovation and Development Plan, Entry 3: Sidewalk Labs CEO Project Vision Open Letter

Posted on July 18, 2019 by bhaggart

Previous Master Innovation and Development Plan liveblog entries available here

Before getting to the meat of Sidewalk Labs’ original response to the RFP, it’s worth noting that what they’ve released is accompanied by a letter from Sidewalk Labs CEO Daniel L. Doctoroff. In the letter, dated October 17, 2017, Doctoroff includes a pitch that invites public consultation:

We’ve decided to release the vision we laid out in our response, both in the interest of transparency and to start what promises to be a history-making public conversation. We hope all Torontonians—and city-lovers far and wide—will join in. Which urban challenges are most urgent? Where can technology prove useful in finding solutions, and where is it not the right tool? Which of our ideas are great, which are crazy, and what did we miss?

We need your ideas, your aspirations, your critiques, your concerns. We hope you’ll email us, call us, tweet at us, and, if possible, join us in person at a series of public conversations, beginning with a Community Town Hall in early November.

As it happens, it was this initial November 2017 Town Hall meeting that interested both Dr. Natasha Tusikov and me in studying smart cities, data governance and the Quayside project. Smart cities are “smart” because of how they collect data via surveillance. And so we were surprised and a bit alarmed when reps from a Google company and from a  government agency that wanted to set up a smart city spent so much time on fanciful infrastructure projects and so little time on data and surveillance issues, and none that I can recall on intellectual property.

As we livestreamed the meeting, we couldn’t for the life of us square the insistence at the Town Hall that individual privacy would be respected with our understanding that a smart city only works if everything is being observed. Would the price of heated sidewalk be the observation of our every movement?  But even if you didn’t want to go that far, it really did seem like neither Google’s Sidewalk Labs nor Waterfront Toronto wanted to talk about data, emphasizing the physical instead of the virtual.

It turns out that this was a pretty accurate assessment of the situation. The April 2018 creation of the Digital Strategy Advisory Panel was an admission by Waterfront Toronto that they had been caught off-guard by the public interest in the digital and data aspects of what is almost entirely a digital- and data-driven project.

As for the other partner, the August 14, 2018, Toronto Star headline – “Sidewalk Labs unveils plans for timber towers, raincoats for buildings in Quayside, but Torontonians must wait for data details” – perfectly captures how Sidewalk Labs carried itself. Ten months after it was awarded the Quayside contract, Sidewalk Labs didn’t want to talk data.

When you have the world’s foremost data-driven company, subsidiary or no, constantly talking about heated sidewalks and timber skyscrapers, you have a problem. After all, Sidewalk Labs, a company with hardly any track record to speak of, was hired to develop some of the most valuable property in North America because it was a Google company, a data company, not for their prowess with an axe.

Can children vote? Consultations as PR exercise

As for the Quayside consultations, it’s hard not to conclude that they were largely a PR exercise. Consider in particular two elements of the 13-point list of “different ways you can get involved!” according to Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto:

  1. Send your child, ages 9-12, to a free YMCA-Sidewalk Toronto Summer Kids Camp to learn about the waterfront and explore ideas for its future.

  2. Apply for our Sidewalk Toronto Fellows Program for Torontonians, ages 19-24.

Granted, touting a “weeklong Summer Kids Camp” in which “campers will have the opportunity to learn, play, and explore as they develop their own ideas” as a serious form of community consultation on a multi-million-dollar urban planning megaproject may be exactly the kind of innovative thinking only a Google company could come up with. Or maybe it’s just as much of an absurd and condescendingly patronizing feint as it seems.

As for the Sidewalk Toronto Fellows Program for young adults, these twelve selected fellows will “travel with us to three international cities over six months to explore the future of cities and technology and prepare a public report.”

Let’s quickly unpack this program, since (spoiler alert) it’ll become important when we get to the actual Master Innovation and Development Plan. To put the ages of these young adults into perspective, if these fellows are in university, they would be second-to-fourth-year undergraduates, MA students and, at the top end, recent MA graduates. Now, I have known and worked with many bright undergrad and Masters students, but the key word here is students. They’re still learning about how the world works. In a few years they might be experts, but not yet.

Also, taking a dozen students to three international cities on Sidewalk Labs’ dime isn’t a consultation; it’s a field trip, complete with a heaping side dish of conflict of interest. That Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs would try to pass off these initiatives as anything other than cheap PR stunts is, frankly, insulting. And it’s certainly not a consultation.

Analog consultations for a digital project

One final thing. Google is one of the world’s leading online companies, a world-dominating tech behemoth. It knows the internet. Sidewalk Labs, a Google company, was hired because of its ability to think digital, to build a city “from the internet up,” to take an oft-repeated phrase from their Project Vision document (up tomorrow).

So where were the online consultations? Where was the innovative use of Google tech, to allow Torontonians to discuss amongst themselves and with Sidewalk Labs/Waterfront Toronto what kind of smart city they wanted? Here is the world’s greatest online company pitching a new form of digital smart city, willing to talk about the innovative use of every physical building material imaginable. The only place where they didn’t talk innovation was in designing these consultations. Instead, physical roundtables, with the agendas tightly controlled by Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto, dominated their consultation process.

The digital aspect of consultations for what is intended to be the world’s greatest digital city, by a subsidiary of the world’s greatest digital company, consisted only of an invitation to “Go online to learn about Sidewalk Toronto, watch our videos, review documents, and complete surveys.” And livestream events.

Contrast this with the Brazilian government’s two-phase online consultations leading to its 2014 Marco Civil internet governance law. As Dr. Tusikov and I describe it elsewhere:

The first stage solicited public input, which responded to clearly stated topics set by subject experts, designed to be partly educational. Crucially, this was not just a one-way street: They used an online platform to allow for collaboration among contributors.

In the second stage, the public responded to a draft legal text, which they could compare to the first-stage discussions.

Even better, they did so using WordPress pages, and participants were able to interact with each other online, sharing ideas. And it was incredibly successful, creating legitimacy and contributing to sound policy in a technically complex area for what was the world’s first Internet Bill of Rights.

This is not rocket science. One wonders if this type of back-and-forth consultation was too outside-the-box for Sidewalk Labs.

Limiting public engagement

That’s not to say that the consultations did not serve a purpose. By limiting public engagement to a few relatively easily controlled public events and by minimizing online engagement, Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto were able to maintain the top-down control over this project that has been present since its inception.

Sidewalk Labs CEO Daniel L. Doctoroff may be very fond of invoking Jane Jacobs, but everything about Quayside screams central planning and control. That they have been forced to publicly address pesky questions about who will run Quayside, the scope of the project and how  data and privacy will be governed is a tribute to the community activists who have kept the heat on these two organizations from day one. Any accountability in this process has emerged despite, not because of, the Quayside “consultations.”

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Liveblogging Sidewalk Labs’ Master Innovation and Development Plan, Entry 2: Waterfront Toronto’s Original Request for Proposals

Posted on July 17, 2019 by bhaggart

Previous Master Innovation and Development Plan liveblog entries available here

I’ve previously written, with Zachary Spicer, about the problems with Waterfront Toronto’s original Request for Proposals, namely that they outsourced the decision-making about data and intellectual property to the Google company Sidewalk Labs. As I mentioned in my previous entry, the Ontario Auditor General’s report confirmed our initial suspicion that Waterfront Toronto had no clue, when they began all this, about the importance of data and intellectual property in the context of an innovation-focused smart-city project.

This is particularly problematic since smart cities are smart through their use of data. To be absolutely clear, the collection, control and use of data is the whole point of a smart city. It’s all about the data; it’s all about the surveillance. Leaving these to the side is like designing a rooftop swimming pool and treating any water-related issues as something to be worked out later. (Spoiler: It will not end well.)

And innovation – the embrace of which was a key rationale for this whole unfortunate project – is intimately tied up with intellectual property. As we’ll see below, Waterfront Toronto left it to their commercial partner to set the terms on which Waterfront Toronto and Canada would benefit (or not) from any Quayside-related IP. For a government agency that, as we learned from the Auditor General’s report, was required (and failing) to come up with independent revenue sources, not to have a plan to capture the economic benefits of any IP developed in Quayside was remarkably short-sighted, to say the least.

The Auditor General’s report, and my last post, deal with the many irregularities and oddities surrounding the issuing of the Request for Proposals. However, although I’ve already focused on the key parts of a smart city in my previous analysis – data and IP – it’s probably useful to revisit the Request for Proposals to see how well what Sidewalk Labs’ Master Innovation and Development Plan reflects what Waterfront Toronto initially requested.

Beyond Quayside

On the big land grab, Waterfront Toronto clearly indicates that the 12-acre Quayside is the focus of this tender. However, in the RFP it also reserves to itself the right to advance Quayside-developed “solutions, processes and partnerships across the eastern waterfront “as those lands become available to Waterfront Toronto (as per the established protocols with the City of Toronto)” (p. 6, emphasis added). Sidewalk Labs’ push to control the entire eastern waterfront has its roots in the RFP.

Fundamental problems

In reviewing the original RFP, it becomes quite clear that the origins of this entire mess – the confusion, Sidewalk Labs’ overreach – are rooted in Waterfront Toronto’s Quayside RFP. The RFP outsources almost every key governance aspect – from specific issues like data and intellectual property governance to more foundational things such as the definition of targets and key performance indicators, to the “Partner” (e.g., p. 14).

The fundamental flaw in the RFP can be traced to one objective in particular, that

the Partner will work closely with Waterfront Toronto to … Create the required governance constructs to stimulate the growth of an urban innovation cluster, including legal frameworks (e.g. Intellectual Property, privacy, data sharing), financial considerations (including investment opportunities and revenue sharing expectations), deployment testbeds and project monitoring (KPI’s, reporting requirements and tools to capture data). (p. 17)

It is, to put it lightly, a terrible, unbelievably horrible idea to let the company responsible for designing a smart city define the parameters under which it will work and by which it will be evaluated. Although these and other requirements envision a partnership with Waterfront Toronto, and although Waterfront Toronto sees itself as responsible for reviewing, for example, proposed technologies and methodologies, nothing Waterfront Toronto has done in the past few years suggests that it has the expertise to be an effective contributor to this project in this area. The creation of a part-time Digital Strategy Advisory Panel of limited effectiveness can’t make up for this fundamental lack of expertise.

If Waterfront Toronto knew what it was doing regarding data, IP and the very scope and definition of the project, it wouldn’t have had to ask an outside group to define it for them. That doing so, especially in the absence of any in-house ability to understand that the project, would create an enormous, insurmountable conflict of interest for the successful partner, does not seem to have occurred to Waterfront Toronto.

(More evidence that data governance wasn’t on Waterfront Toronto’s radar: the word “data” as something produced and used by this innovative project appears only twice in the main text, both on page 17: “The Partner shall “Create the required governance constructs to stimulate the growth of an urban innovation cluster, including legal frameworks (e.g., … data sharing) … and project monitoring (KPI’s, reporting requirements and tools to capture data).”)

The communications lead

And on the easiest deliverable – ensuring that Waterfront Toronto serves “as the communications lead” (p. 15) for this project – Waterfront Toronto has clearly failed to do so. We don’t need to consult the MIDP to know that Sidewalk Labs has controlled the narrative from the very beginning.

Really, this all reads like it was written by an agency that wanted to get in on the Smart City game but had no real idea what doing so would entail. The tell is their outsourcing of everything to do with IP and data governance to the company that stands to profit enormously from data and IP. Even without getting to the MIDP, and even without knowing about the Auditor General’s damning report, it’s hard not to argue that this RFP should never have been issued. It does not make Waterfront Toronto look good. At all. It makes them look like an easy mark.

What follows below are the key parts of the RFP, against which I’m going to compare the MIDP. Near the end I just quote whole parts of the RFP because it’ll be helpful (to me, at least) to be able to refer quickly to the main criteria.

Waterfront Toronto, “Quayside: Request for Proposals: Innovation and Funding Partner for the Quayside Development Opportunity,” RFP No.: 2017-13, March 17, 2017.

Note: Waterfront Toronto was looking for a company with a development plan, and one with money or connections that could get them money.

Part A: Overview of the Opportunity

The initial proposal should include a “benchmark climate positive approach that will lead the world in city building practices” (p. 6)

  • “showcase advanced technologies, building materials, sustainable practices and innovative business models that demonstrate pragmatic solutions toward climate positive urban development.” (p. 6)
  • “highly sustainable, mixed-use, mixed-income neighbourhood … as well as addressing the need for mobility and accessibility.” (p. 7)
  • Contribution to emerging tech and urban innovation clusters (p. 7)

Confusion of scope

Toronto’s eastern waterfront, with more than 300 hectares (750 acres) of land subject to future revitalization (see Figure 1), presents a unique opportunity for governments, private enterprise, technology providers, investors and academic institutions to collaborate on these critical challenges and create a new global benchmark for sustainable, inclusive and accessible urban development. (p. 6)

The RFP officially focuses on the 12-acre Quayside Development (p. 6), although it is envisioned as “a pilot environment for the broader eastern waterfront reviatlization” (p. 14).

The acquisition of more land seems to have played a part in Waterfront Toronto’s thinking:

 As the directing agency of the waterfront lands, Waterfront Toronto, therefore, reserves the right to” advance Quayside-developed “solutions, processes and partnerships across the eastern waterfront “as those lands become available to Waterfront Toronto (as per the established protocols with the City of Toronto) (p. 6, emphasis added).

What the partner needs to deliver

  • “a clear vision and action plan for creating a vibrant, climate-positive and prosperous community”
  • “a national and global model to encourage market transformation towards climate-positive [i.e., greenhouse gas-reducing] city building.” (p. 6)
  • Between 500-800 units of “Affordable Rental Housing” (p. 9)
  • work with Waterfront Toronto “to identify progressive solutions to deliver high-quality, moderately priced, purpose-built rental housing” (p. 9)
  • “beautifully designed public spaces, compelling cultural amenities, innovative solutions, active programing, and integrated transportation and mobility infrastructure” that people will want to visit year-round. (p. 9)
  • Provide “an environment in which an urban innovation cluster can be established and thrive.”
    • Leverage “demonstration spaces, project testbeds, and industry-academic partnerships” to do so.
    • “help create opportunities for job creation, entrepreneurial enterprise and the growth of established industries” in the surrounding community. (p. 9)
  • A funding model to deliver funding for future waterfront projects

Relationship with Waterfront Toronto

The Partner will work directly with Waterfront Toronto in the conceptualization, business planning and implementation stages of the Project … . This includes identifying and defining the necessary technologies, infrastructure, strategies, measurable outcomes and downstream partners that will ensure the Project’s success. (p. 7)

Of course, if only one partner has the relevant experience and understanding of the project, that partner will end up driving the project.

Waterfront Toronto will review technologies and methodologies proposed by Sidewalk Labs (p. 11). However, given Waterfront Toronto’s lack of expertise in this area, it is unlikely that they have the ability to actually provide any meaningful input in this area.

Relationship with data and ICT

The project will leverage the strength of existing world-class digital infrastructure within the waterfront to realize fully the benefits of emerging technologies –including but not limited to the Industrial Internet of Things (“IIoT”) analytics, and artificial intelligence (“AI”) – to support data-informed decision-making for residents, visitors, investors, employers, and service providers. (p. 8)

In the Project Vision and Business Implementation Plan (Appendix C), data governance is not mentioned.

Intellectual property

Transferability: Describe the projected transferability of the Project’s best practices, solutions and intellectual property beyond Toronto’s waterfront. How will the Project demonstrate the capacity to drive market transformation? (p. C2)

Lack of government money identified as a problem

A lack of government funding requires “new and innovative partnerships, funding and investment models.” (p. 9)

The original timeline

First, undertake

broad market engagement to secure infrastructure design and delivery partners for critical infrastructure elements. This may include working with multiple sectors and industries who are involved with various aspects of designing and delivering sustainable communities; including technology and systems firms, utilities, transit authorities, lenders, materials suppliers, constructors, and others who are active in the infrastructure development process. (p. 11)

Then, engage

innovative real estate development teams with the vision, capacity, and commitment to deliver a distinctive and ambitious, mixed-use community that is consistent with Waterfront Toronto’s high design and performance standards, and aligned with the vision and objectives of the Project. (p. 11)

Light rail

The provision of light rail transit (“LRT”) in a dedicated right-of-way, as part of a revitalized Queens Quay, has been approved through a Class Environmental Assessment (available in the Electronic Data Room) and will ultimately connect the eastern waterfront to the downtown core. Waterfront Toronto is actively pursuing funding options to extend the LRT along Queens Quay East, including private sector contributions and a phased implementation plan that could include interim bus rapid transit (BRT). (p. 12)

Note that light rail is provided in terms of the context of the lands to be developed, not as something for the partner to address.

The actual land

It is intended that the future developers will be responsible for removing existing structures, as part of the redevelopment plans. (p. 12)

VII. Partner Scope and Deliverables

Vision

identify and define the necessary technologies, infrastructure, strategies, measurable outcomes and downstream partners that will ensure the delivery of a globally significant demonstration project that addresses the challenges” of “sustainability, resiliency and urban innovation; complete communities”; and “economic development and prosperity. (p. 14)

“The Partner will work with Waterfront Toronto to (Note: following lists are from pp. 14-15):

  • Review and refine the work undertaken by the Team. Waterfront Toronto and the Partner will then further engage the Team to finalize the goals for the Project as they relate to financial, sustainability and innovation objectives.
  • Create the overall vision and goals for the Project with the Team. This will include, but not be limited to, deep-dive workshops, industry consultations, additional market sounding and community engagement efforts as appropriate.
  • Define measurable outcomes … including the necessary Key Performance Indicators (“KPI’s”) and measurement techniques to evaluate success.”
  • Analyze and articulate the potential risks and viability of implementing the vision.
  • Identify potential barriers to implementation and assist in preparing the necessary mitigation strategies to overcome those barriers.
  • Evaluate feasibility to transfer best practices and lessons learned from the Project to future developments and other jurisdictions as an exemplar of best practices and breakthrough solutions of global significance.
  • Identify and engage additional potential partners in downstream opportunities as they relate to investment, horizontal infrastructure development and vertical development opportunities.
  • Collaborate on developing strategies, tactics and methodologies for establishing and promoting ongoing thought leadership related to the project and its objectives.
  • Create a clear, compelling vision statement and communications materials that will be shared with stakeholders and potential additional participants in the Project.
  • Support and collaborate with Waterfront Toronto, which will serve as the communications lead, to ensure the significance of the Project and its desired outcomes are effectively communicated. [emphasis added]
  • Provide financial support and required materials for community and stakeholder engagement undertakings. The Partner will be an active contributor in these discussions.

2. Sustainability, Resilience and Urban Innovation

“The Partner will work with Waterfront Toronto to assess and confirm that the solutions and technologies proposed by Arup will help create a sustainable community (striving to achieve a climate positive outcome), and help to meet the carbon reduction targets of all three orders of government (Government of Canada, Province of Ontario, City of Toronto):

  • Conduct a thorough economic and technical critical analysis of the solutions and technologies recommended by Arup to achieve our climate positive objectives for the Project. This review should also include alternative and additional technologies for consideration, as appropriate, which will then be factored into the evolved models and projections prepared by Arup.
  • Refine the sustainability objectives, strategies and targets for the Project. In addition to the work already completed, specific efforts will be taken to identify the potential roadmap for these solutions to be included in future phases of eastern waterfront revitalization.
  • Define an approach to delivering the confirmed carbon reduction strategies, solutions and technologies, including a schedule/phasing plan (including, but not limited to energy, transportation, waste, materials and water) to support the overall objectives of the Project as they relate to Waterfront Toronto’s broader revitalization mandate.
  • Contribute appropriate financial resources and/or solution components to support building and district level solutions for the eastern waterfront including pilot projects that demonstrate innovative, emerging technologies.
  • the Partner will help refine and update Waterfront Toronto’s Minimum Green Building Requirements to ensure that they reflect the principles of our Resiliency and Innovation Framework, and support the aspirations for the Project and future phases of revitalization.” (p. 15)

3. Complete Communities

a) Mixed-income and Affordable Housing

“The Partner and Waterfront Toronto will explore and create a development model that leverages the strong demand for market condominiums and rental housing to deliver enhanced affordable housing options and mitigate housing inequality.”

“Waterfront Toronto has a mandate to set aside sufficient land to accommodate 20 percent of residential units as Affordable Rental Housing. We anticipate the Project can achieve a broader mix of housing affordability beyond this mandate.” (p. 15; emphasis added)

  • Develop a viable and implementable delivery model for additional mixed-income housing, particularly moderately-priced workforce rental housing that engages the private sector and requires minimal government funding.
  • Explore using new smart technologies, building systems, materials and design approaches that can help lower the cost of construction, utilities and operations, while advancing our low carbon/climate positive objectives.
  • Identify financing strategies for a pilot mixed- income housing development that integrates market rate, workforce and Affordable Rental Housing units.
  • The Partner will support Waterfront Toronto as it champions this model with governments.”

b) Transit

“The Partner will actively participate in planning and securing funding for integrated transit solutions and the related public realm together with Waterfront Toronto and in partnership with other landowners and developers in the Bay Street to Cherry Street corridor.

  • Assist in developing a viable and implementable model for sustainable transit along the eastern waterfront into the Port Lands that can be supported by a combination of government and private sector funding.
  • Assist in championing this model with governments and approval agencies having jurisdiction over transit delivery.
  • Contribute appropriate financial resources and/or solution components to support transit solutions for the eastern waterfront including pilot projects that demonstrate innovative, emerging transit technologies.”

c) Amenities

“The Partner will work with Waterfront Toronto to identify appropriate and required retail, cultural and community amenities for the Project and adjacent precincts to ensure the creation of a vibrant complete community.”

d) Design

“The Partner and Waterfront Toronto will work together to achieve new standards for architecture and the public realm that leverage Waterfront Toronto’s history as a leader in delivering quality of place and high impact designs that attract creative talent and increase overall project value.

“The partner will work with Waterfront Toronto to ensure an integrated design process is used to deliver sustainable technology that includes innovative building design and architectural expression.”

4. Economic Development and Prosperity

  • “Identify and engage institutions locally, nationally and internationally as long-term partners in the Project. This will include applied research opportunities as well as developing physical and virtual campuses, as appropriate.
  • Identify, engage and evaluate entrepreneurial companies that are developing new technologies consistent with delivering the goals and objectives of the Project.
  • Create the requirements for an urban innovation collaboration and innovation space with the appropriate programming and partners (including industry and academia) within the Project. This will include developing a full business plan for this environment, and may include outreach to additional public and private stakeholders to secure the necessary capital.
  • Assess the viability of creating a catalyst fund that will invest in emerging companies that are engaged in the Project to assist them in overcoming barriers to scaling up. If such a fund is deemed to be of significance and viable, work with Waterfront Toronto to identify and secure funders and design the framework for delivery.
  • Create the required governance constructs to stimulate the growth of an urban innovation cluster, including legal frameworks (e.g. Intellectual Property, privacy, data sharing), financial considerations (including investment opportunities and revenue sharing expectations), deployment testbeds and project monitoring (KPI’s, reporting requirements and tools to capture data).
  • Land revenues and the timing of payments to Waterfront Toronto, or other sources of revenue as proposed by the Partner.
  • Ownership and sharing of intellectual property resulting from the Project.” (pp. 15-17)

Appendix A: Background Information & Project Requirements

Pages A4-A5:

Developing a WTEI Workforce Development Plan

The Partner will attend a preliminary meeting with Waterfront Toronto and WTEI representatives to discuss the WTEI program, and to develop a WTEI Workforce Development plan, which may include:

  • Customized Recruitment – including working with the City of Toronto’s Partnership to Advance Youth Employment (PAYE) program and the United Way Toronto & York Region’s Career Navigator Program, to identify
  • jobs, training and work based learning opportunities for youths between the ages of 18-29.
  • Opportunities for registered apprenticeships, accessing newly trained youths through the Central Ontario Building Trades’ (COBT) Hammer Heads Program.
  • Opportunities to develop customized skill training initiatives.
  • Other learning, networking and skill development initiatives/workshops.

The Partner will be required to commit to the following:

  • Assign a liaison to work with a WTEI representative to further develop the WTEI plan details and an implementation plan, including opportunities, timelines and key performance indicators;
  • Meet with the WTEI representative on a quarterly basis to provide updates and feedback on the WTEI plan implementation;
  • Report progress and outcomes to Waterfront Toronto’s Project Manager in charge of the assignment on a quarterly basis for the term of the project; and
  • Work with Waterfront Toronto and downstream vendors and/or partners to further adapt this program as new opportunities arise.

Appendix C: RFP Particulars (Submission Requirements and Evaluation Criteria)

Section C, Rated Criteria covers the criteria Waterfront Toronto used to evaluate the initial submission (pp. C1-C7). It’s a lot to transcribe, so I won’t. But it’s worth reading in its entirety.

From this section, here are a few issues of interest:

A. Project Vision & Business Implementation Plan

The Project Vision and Business Implementation Plan should not exceed 25 pages (including images, diagrams and tables) (p. C2)

Interesting inclusion:

e. Broader Eastern Waterfront Revitalization:

Describe how your vision relates to the broader waterfront revitalization efforts. (p. C2)

A5. Approach to Business Case and Financial Requirements (p. C3)

a. Legal Structure Approach: Describe how you would approach the following:

i. Roles and Responsibilities: Provide an initial proposal of roles and responsibilities for Waterfront Toronto and the Partner, understanding that Waterfront Toronto intends to remain an active partner and investor in this and future phases of the Project through to its completion.

ii. Legal Structures & Documents: Describe required legal structure and documents required to implement the partnership.

iii. Risks & Benefits: Propose how risks and benefits will be shared. How will you create an assessment tool to allocate risks between Waterfront Toronto and the Partner?

iv. Intellectual Property: Provide a preliminary framework for a potential management approach for Intellectual Property introduced to or developed through the Project, and any revenue sharing between Waterfront Toronto and the Partner.

v. “Off-Ramps”: How could the venture be unwound in the event that the Project is not achieving its goals?

vi. “On-Ramps”: How could new partners / participants be included in the Project? Are there any ownership/equity considerations?

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New book: Information, Technology and Control in a Changing World

Posted on July 17, 2019 by bhaggart

Iscreen-shot-2019-06-22-at-10.55.11-am‘m happy to announce the publication of Information, Technology and Control in a Changing World: Understanding Power Structures in the 21st Century. It’s co-edited by Natasha Tusikov, Kate Henne and me. You can buy it now! And if you go to this link, you can download for free(!) three chapters, including the introduction, my chapter and Kate’s fascinating analysis of India’s Aadhaar system from a surveillance and social justice perspective.

This book explores the interconnected ways in which the control of knowledge has become central to the exercise of political, economic, and social power. Building on the work of International Political Economy scholar Susan Strange, this multidisciplinary volume features experts from political science, anthropology, law, criminology, women’s and gender studies, and Science and Technology Studies, who consider how the control of knowledge is shaping our everyday lives. From “weaponized copyright” as a censorship tool, to the battle over control of the internet’s “guts,” to the effects of state surveillance at the Mexico–U.S. border, this book offers a coherent way to understand the nature of power in the twenty-first century.

Check it out! It’s a good one.

 

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Out now: My review of Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Posted on July 17, 2019 by bhaggart

The Journal of Digital Media & Policy has just published my long take on Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. This is a modified version of the blog review I posted here back in February; this journal version stands as the definitive one.

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Liveblogging Sidewalk Labs’ Master Innovation and Development Plan, Bonus entry: Waterfront Toronto takes the Douglas Adams approach to public consultation

Posted on July 16, 2019 by bhaggart

Previous Master Innovation and Development Plan liveblog entries available here

“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.”
Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

As I was touching up my introductory post yesterday, it occurred to me that readers and the remaining Toronto royalty who have not yet made up their minds about a 1,500-page report that was released only a few weeks ago might want to know how to participate in the fulsome consultations Waterfront Toronto has promised the city.

Finding out how to participate ended up being much more difficult than I expected. Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs might be planning the innovative, accessible smart city of the future, but there is nothing innovative or smart about their consultation process. To be blunt, they are not making it easy to participate, and the poorly designed process that Waterfront Toronto has put in place raises questions about how useful results will actually be.

Neither does Waterfront Toronto’s actions in the first public consultation (July 15) provide much confidence in their commitment to full transparency and maximum public engagement, as they did not make any audio or video recordings of the meeting. According to the Toronto Star, “Waterfront Toronto officials told The Star that they expect to record and make publicly available all subsequent meetings, with written summaries to be posted online.”

Waterfront Toronto has been on this file for three years now, and providing a written and video record of one of Toronto’s most important urban development projects in a generation would seem to be a no-brainer. That they didn’t do this for the first meeting, followed by a reassurance that they will start recording in the next one has the strong feel of an organization that’s reactively improvising.

An advisory consultation

There’s also the reality that at the end of the day this is all very much an advisory consultation. If Waterfront Toronto wants to go ahead with this project, all the negative feedback in the world can’t stop them. As the Auditor General of Ontario’s report points out, our elected officials “can only influence Waterfront Toronto through their appointees to its Board of Directors” (p. 694).

The Auditor General also notes that, as of December 2018, Waterfront Toronto’s “protocol” for soliciting governments’ review and comments on the MIDP:

only requires Waterfront Toronto to provide to each of the three governments the key agreement and any supplementary agreements for comment. The protocol does not clarify whether Waterfront Toronto would approve the MIDP if Sidewalk Labs does not make changes to the draft that the governments may request. (p. 694)

The long and short of all this is, if you want to influence the outcome of this project, don’t just focus on these consultations. Contact your local councillor and your federal Member of Parliament. The federal election is just around the corner, and it looks like the Liberals will need to hold Toronto to stay in power. Ask your candidates where they stand on Waterfront Toronto, Sidewalk Labs and the MIDP.

Still, being responsible citizens, let’s try to offer our opinion, shall we?

“Down to the cellar”

Our journey begins early on the morning of July 15. It’s a digital world, and Waterfront Toronto is offering us the city of the future, with everything conveniently at our fingertips. So it’s off to their main project site, quayside.to, which prominently features a link to the MIDP proposal, but no obvious link for feedback.

The misleadingly labelled “Contact Us” button brings us to a page whose most prominent offering is the opportunity to “Sign up for Waterfront Toronto’s Monthly Newsletter,” so no help here. (In fairness, it also includes their general email address, quayside@waterfrontoronto.ca, on which more later.) And no “How can I make my voice heard?” in the FAQ, either.

Success! Clicking on the menu button – the digital equivalent of opening the door to the cellar – brings us to something labelled “Get Involved”.

“Stuck in a disused lavatory”

One’s initial read of Waterfront Toronto’s “Get Involved” page does not inspire confidence in the ability to conduct a thorough public consultation. The page first informs us that “The next public consultation will be announced following the submission of the MIDP to Waterfront Toronto. From there it is on to another invitation to subscribe to their newsletter, an invitation to interact with them on Facebook and Twitter (where reasoned discourse thrives), and a suggestion that one check “back here for details later in the Spring.”

Beyond just getting “involved,” and also stretching the meaning of the phrase “get involved,” Waterfront Toronto wants to share with us their “Engagement history” (option 1) and their document library (option 4). They also take this opportunity, at the bottom of the page, to pitch their newsletter one more time, which makes me wonder if someone’s performance bonus is linked to hitting a newsletter-subscriber target. #bigdata

We’re also given the chance to participate in a “Civic Lab” (option 3), where people can “discuss thoughts, feedback, and questions pertaining to the Quayside Project.” Unfortunately, this link only takes us to reports on three previous Civic Labs and offers us the chance to visit their document library. Waterfront Toronto here passes up a golden opportunity to goose their Newsletter numbers, as the page features no invitation to subscribe to their newsletter.

Much more relevant to actually getting involved is Option 2, Participate in a public consultation. Why, yes, I would like to “Check for upcoming events.” Let’s do that!

“The lights had probably gone.”

Three levels down from the main page. It opens with the by-now-inevitable invitation to subscribe to their monthly newsletter or to contact them on Facebook or Twitter.

But we also see, for the first time, how Waterfront Toronto plans to consult with the public. They have planned a series of meetings, which will include “a main presentation and multiple breakout sessions.” Four presentations are planned across the city, starting … yesterday (July 15) and ending … in eight days (July 23).

They will also be hosting a series of “Quayside Dialogue Boxes,” to be held at various Toronto libraries, at which “staff from Waterfront Toronto will share information about the proposal, answer questions, and listen to your feedback.” Five of them are already passed; two are upcoming, on July 18 and 25.

If you’re keeping track of these timelines, Sidewalk Labs released its one-thousand-five-hundred-page report on June 24. Waterfront Toronto, on its consultations page, offers Torontonians four public consultations spread over eight days, held in the depths of summer three weeks after this mammoth report was released, a report that Waterfront Toronto itself had only recently seen for the first time in its entirety. And some library-based info sessions, most of which have already finished.

Perhaps reflecting the digital spirit of the multi-billion-dollar project, starting on July 15 Waterfront Toronto also began offering residents the opportunity to participate online via not one, but two, surveys. The shorter survey, “to share quick responses about how receptive you are to the proposals in Sidewalk Labs’ MIDP,” is almost comically superficial. It asks “How receptive are you to Sidewalk Lab’s proposals about” the one-thousand-five-hundred-page MIDP’s various sections, with choices of: Receptive; Receptive to some; Not receptive; and Need more information.

The longer “Detailed Survey” is actually quite good. It provides background information and asks pointed but open questions about each section that seem to allow for people to raise a wide variety of concerns and opinions. A section for general comments would’ve been helpful, but otherwise it’s exactly the type of online engagement that a project like this needs.

But there’s a rather short time limit. According to the “Participate in a public consultation” page also says “The deadline for Round One Online Consultation feedback is July 31, 2019.”

Which brings us to the main problem. The Detailed Survey is appropriate for this project precisely because it is so detailed. It has to be, because the MIDP covers so much ground. However, what this means is that it would take someone well-versed in the MIDP (itself of daunting length) the better part of a day to fill out. And Waterfront Toronto is seeking (presumably informed) comments for its Round One within the next 15 days.

(An aside: the reference to a “Round One” only appeared on July 15, and only in passing. Previously, there was nothing on this page to indicate that public consultations would last beyond late July.)

This is madness. Most governments hold longer, more in-depth hearings on less-complicated legislation than this. Each part of Sidewalk Labs’ proposal has so many moving parts that it requires not one two-week survey (followed by… what?), but separate hearings into each aspect. Any less and the responses to even the Detailed Survey are likely to be as superficial as the short survey.

“In the bottom of a locked filing cabinet”

All of this would normally lead me to become frustrated at the inadequacy of Waterfront Toronto’s consultation process, but my problem was that I hadn’t descended deeply enough into the cellar. Thankfully, Natasha Tusikov, who is also working her way through all of these documents for a SSHRC-funded project on smart-city data governance, points out that, in fact, Waterfront Toronto clearly lays out their extensive public consultation process.

In its Note to Reader.

On pages 46 and 47 of a 66-page document.

Which is only available as a pdf.

In this easily accessible document, the public is informed that the aforementioned public meetings are only round one of a two-round process. The first round will end on July 31, 2019, and feedback received up to then “will be summarized and shared publicly by the end of August 2019.”

Waterfront Toronto also helpfully suggests that “Given the volume of material in the proposal (1,500+ pages in total), members of the public may choose to attend more than one of the public meetings.”

Round Two, which is only hinted at on Waterfront Toronto’s webpage, is planned for the Fall, “exact timing to be determined,”

once the Waterfront Toronto team and the public have had more time to work through and consider the Draft MIDP. Round Two will include a report on the public feedback during Round One and will take the public conversation further to focus on particular areas of the Draft MIDP where the Waterfront Toronto team would benefit from additional public feedback and advice.

Take a moment to unpack this remarkable paragraph.

Waterfront Toronto is holding a second round of consultations in the Fall (but didn’t think to mention this on their “Get Involved” page) because it’s beyond unreasonable to ask anyone, even the people at Waterfront Toronto who are professionally invested in this scheme, to come up with a reasoned opinion on this mastodonic proposal in just over a month.

And they plan to give a report on the feedback from Round One in Round Two. Round One’s unreasonably tight timeline means that the discussion in Round Two will be shaped by two types of people: those who have can and have devoted several working days to plowing through this report (howdy), and those who don’t mind weighing in on a complicated subject without first doing their due diligence.

But most importantly: Waterfront Toronto is asking the public to comment on a report that it admits it has not yet fully analyzed.

Also, why the arbitrary July 31 deadline?

This is, in short, not a great consultation plan. It smacks of improvisation, which is not something one would necessarily desire from an organization trying to convince the public it can manage a multi-billion-dollar tech development and effectively supervise a subsidiary of one of the world’s most powerful companies.

“Beware of the Leopard”

Page 46 of Waterfront Toronto’s Note to Reader offers one final hard-won tidbit of information, in which we are informed that the Smart Consultation may be alive and well beyond the aforementioned surveys:

For those unable to join us in-person, the http://www.QuaysideTO.ca website includes more information about the project and an online portal to submit written comments.

Submitting written comments to Waterfront Toronto using their online portal is complicated somewhat by the fact that the portal does not seem to exist. There is the survey (which just went live on July 15), but a survey is not a portal, and the survey itself did not even exist when the Note to Reader (a genteel-sounding title that seems more suited to a Jane Austen novel than a development agency) was released.

Ever the intrepid researcher, Dr. Tusikov sent Waterfront Toronto an email to quayside@waterfronttoronto.ca asking to be directed to their portal.

Their response (form-letter, of course):

Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to write to us about the Quayside project. We will be retaining feedback related to Quayside and Sidewalk Labs’ proposal for consideration throughout our engagement and evaluation process.

We are working to address to your individual inquiries as best we can. You can anticipate a more detailed response within a few weeks of this message.

For more information about Waterfront Toronto’s evaluation and consultation process, details on upcoming events, and to read an electronic version of Sidewalk Labs’ proposal head to quaysideto.ca.

We hope to see you at an upcoming consultation.

Thank you,

Waterfront Toronto team

 

A few weeks likely being after the July 31 Round One deadline.

The effects of difficult-to-find and incomplete consultation information, the tight timelines and the oddly structured consultation rounds are significant. As currently set up, this process will minimize informed comment and citizen participation. For an organization that has stepped on one rake after another over the past several years, having to go through so many hoops just to figure out how to participate in a public consultation is not a great look.

A positive first step would be to scrap the arbitrary deadlines, especially for the Detailed Survey, nix the idea of Rounds, and start extensive, focused, detailed consultations in September, once Waterfront Toronto has had a chance to read and understand the report it commissioned. Used the summer to help inform people, and for Waterfront Toronto to analyze fully the report they’re supposed to be evaluating. There’s no need to rush this, and true public consultation involves more than information provision and reading a newsletter.

But please, do sign up for Waterfront Toronto’s monthly newsletter. I fear someone’s livelihood hangs in the balance.

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