{"id":60519,"date":"2019-07-16T11:50:29","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T15:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=60519"},"modified":"2019-07-18T12:11:51","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T16:11:51","slug":"curb-your-enthusiasm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2019\/07\/16\/curb-your-enthusiasm\/","title":{"rendered":"ROBINSON: Let the public make up their mind about Sidewalk Toronto&#8217;s proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On July 4, a group of Toronto community leaders shared their \u201cDear Toronto\u201d open letter as a plea to embrace the Sidewalk Lab\u2019s Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP) for Toronto\u2019s waterfront. This letter followed op-eds from other Toronto community leaders making the case that we\u2019re mature enough as a city to tackle the challenges posed by this project.<\/p>\n<p>These public endorsements rankle me. It\u2019s hard not to read them as leaders saying to city, \u201cit\u2019s ok, we\u2019ve got this, don\u2019t worry about it.\u201d And, frankly, nothing could be further from the conversations we need to have. Now that the MIDP is finally public, I\u2019m going to make a plea for people seeing it for the first time to have a chance to form their own opinions. Everyone is entitled to their opinions: supportive, inquisitive, indifferent, or against. But in order for that to happen, people need the space or time on their own terms to participate and engage.<\/p>\n<p>A fellow urbanist reminded me that \u201crecruiting worthies in the business of selling city building projects is commonplace,\u201d and pointed to Olympic bids and Amazon H2Q as examples.<\/p>\n<p>But this Quayside project isn\u2019t about us a city courting a big external win, competing against other cities. And it isn\u2019t even us as a city yet. It\u2019s Waterfront Toronto trying to sort out whether this plan is worth pursuing to the point that it would be delivered to the City of Toronto. And as part of their process, Waterfront Toronto is formally consulting the public and subject matter experts for their read of what\u2019s in the MIDP to help the board decide whether this pitch is worth accepting. (The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestar.com\/news\/gta\/2019\/07\/15\/googles-quayside-plan-goes-under-microscope-at-first-public-meeting.html\">first session<\/a> took place last night in North York.)<\/p>\n<p>The task of trying to host a public conversation about this project is formidable. The MIDP is massive (1524 pages long). You know it\u2019s a big read when the <a href=\"https:\/\/quaysideto.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Note-to-Reader_June-28-2019_Waterfront-Toronto.pdf?mc_cid=30bca20476&amp;mc_eid=8c72cb2227\">\u201cNote to Reader,\u201d<\/a> an annotation produced by Waterfront Toronto, is 66 pages! The timing is tough in the summer, too.<\/p>\n<p>For the public process to work, the material needs to be accessible. To date, there is still no version that is fully compliant with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. This compliance matters because the designed version isn\u2019t importable into devices that help make text-based documents more accessible. Waterfront Toronto requested such a version from Sidewalk Labs before the June 20 release, but it has yet to be published. For civic conversations as important as this one, accessibility isn\u2019t optional.<\/p>\n<p>I am very much looking forward to learning what people who aren\u2019t inside and alongside this project think of the MIDP. I am also looking forward to seeing who we collectively are as a city during these conversations. My sincerest hope is that people who are new to the process will join Waterfront Toronto in talking about the plan. While some early voices have weighed in, a project of this ambition and significance really needs the power of our collective review and plural perspectives. The power and legitimacy of public voices in this process is a vital input.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s be brave. Let\u2019s be democratic. Let\u2019s give people who are new to the table time to read, think, digest, question, and share. Let the public process unfold and let\u2019s hear what people actually think. The MIDP is bold and it pushes on all kinds of status quo. As a community, we have a civic responsibility to dig into the plan.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of taking the word of civic leaders, ask questions. Join the conversation. It doesn\u2019t make you a NIMBY. It makes you a Torontonian.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Pamela Robinson is the Director of Ryerson University\u2019s School of Urban and Regional Planning and a <\/em>Spacing <em>contributing editor. <\/em> <em>In 2018, she was the Academic Advisor to the Sidewalk Urban Fellows program.<\/em> <em>Pamela is a member of Waterfront Toronto\u2019s Digital Strategy Advisory Panel. The views expressed here are personal ones and do not necessarily reflect either those of the Panel as a whole or Waterfront Toronto. <\/em><em>Follow her on twitter at <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pjrplan?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\">@pjrplan<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>photo courtesy Sidewalk Labs<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On July 4, a group of Toronto community leaders shared their \u201cDear Toronto\u201d open letter as a plea to embrace the Sidewalk Lab\u2019s Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP) for Toronto\u2019s waterfront. This letter followed op-eds from other Toronto community leaders making the case that we\u2019re mature enough as a city to tackle the challenges<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2019\/07\/16\/curb-your-enthusiasm\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;ROBINSON: Let the public make up their mind about Sidewalk Toronto&#8217;s proposal&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8268,"featured_media":60529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-urban-design","category-waterfront"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>ROBINSON: Let the public make up their mind about Sidewalk Toronto&#039;s proposal - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2019\/07\/16\/curb-your-enthusiasm\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ROBINSON: Let the public make up their mind about Sidewalk Toronto&#039;s proposal - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On July 4, a group of Toronto community leaders shared their \u201cDear Toronto\u201d open letter as a plea to embrace the Sidewalk Lab\u2019s Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP) for Toronto\u2019s waterfront. 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