{"id":61745,"date":"2020-05-07T13:00:19","date_gmt":"2020-05-07T17:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=61745"},"modified":"2020-05-07T13:49:11","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T17:49:11","slug":"lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Sidewalk Labs steps away from Toronto waterfront"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From the earliest days of Sidewalk Labs’ bid to establish a beachhead on Toronto\u2019s waterfront, the cultural mismatch, for lack of a better term, was always very much in evidence but never fully acknowledged as the determining factor in the fate of the company\u2019s bid to build a new type of smart city.<\/p>\n

Contrary to what the company\u2019s defenders will say, Toronto\u2019s reaction wasn\u2019t simply an instance of left-ish knee-jerk discomfort with a brash and deep-pocketed suitor from away. Toronto, after all, is a place that\u2019s being constantly re-invented by international business, newcomers and the dreams of ambitious entrepreneurs in emerging sectors. Without Sidewalk\u2019s help, Toronto has become a global hub of not just traditional capital \u2013 mining finance, banking, food processing \u2014 but also the new forms of investment \u2013 in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, fintech, to name a few \u2014 that are up-ending incumbent industries both here and abroad.<\/p>\n

Circa late 2017, when Sidewalk arrived, this city was most assuredly not<\/em> a fortress full of suspicious hermits, fending off foreigners and their unwelcome ways.<\/p>\n

Nor is it now.<\/p>\n

But Toronto, for good or ill, does have a sturdy if under-stated political culture that operates at a very different pace, and with sharply different accountabilities, than anything found in New York and the Bay Area. And for all its slick and costly civic foreplay, Sidewalk only came to this realization late in the game, and, evidently, could not accept it as the basis of a long-term relationship.<\/p>\n

Not enough has been said, in my view, about the contrasting forms of municipal governance in New York and Toronto, and the role this one difference has played. New York, like most American cities, has a strong mayor system, with the chief executive wielding enormous influence over the operations and policy apparatus of the city. This, crucially, was the world Sidewalk CEO Dan Doctoroff knew from his time as Mike Bloomberg\u2019s right hand.<\/p>\n

In New York, mayors can get stuff done quickly. Bloomberg\u2019s administration established a new technical university on city-owned land on Roosevelt Island to make up for what he and his advisors saw as a gap in the city\u2019s post-secondary\/tech industry infrastructure. He provided all sorts of leeway and political cover for transportation czar Janette Sadik-Khan to make dramatic and abrupt changes to road allocation and public space across New York. Bill DeBlasio, shortly after his election, set in motion a vast affordable housing building program worth billions.<\/p>\n

Of course, New York isn\u2019t an autocracy, and city council isn\u2019t merely a political Potemkin village. But Doctoroff\u2019s experience with mega-projects like the Hudson Yards is that the mayor\u2019s office enjoys a great deal of both symbolic and formal influence. There are fewer steps between intention and execution.<\/p>\n

Toronto\u2019s political culture, as we all know, is far more decentralized and ponderous. The mayor has more informal clout than a city councilor, but is still just one vote in a collective decision-making body. We have nothing that remotely resembles a city charter. Our co-mingled relationships with the upper orders of government are completely different than what exists in the U.S. And even structured attempts to streamline decision-making \u2013 and Waterfront Toronto is, of course, an embodiment of that kind of thinking \u2013 tend to be either cautious or circumscribed or both. There are lots of deciders, not least the highly experienced civil servants who make it their business to defend institutional interests.<\/p>\n

Former Waterfront Toronto CEO Will Fleissig \u2014 who, in early 2017, ordered the RFP that put this whole melodrama in motion \u2014 was clueless about the city\u2019s political culture, and, more specifically, the deep history of why the agency existed in the first place \u2014 two critical mistakes. Consequently, he attempted to perform a graft with incompatible tissue and then couldn\u2019t figure out why it didn\u2019t take.<\/p>\n

Point is, local history matters, and rarely has that lesson been more in evidence than during this extended debacle. About a year in to the process, I asked a WT executive if they understood why the agency’s culture of consultation and transparency was so foundational, and not merely procedural wallpaper. They didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Fleissig had blithely zapped the institutional memory in favour of a culture of boosterism and techno-babble that may have played well in San Francisco but offered nothing useful to the Torontonians who were deeply invested in the generational city-building project that WT has been mandated to carry out.<\/p>\n

Doctoroff, for his part, arrived with an executive team and a set of lobbyists who assured him that getting to yes in a city besotted by the tech industry\u2019s cash would be like taking candy from a baby.<\/p>\n

Here are the steps. Follow them and you\u2019ll get what you want.<\/p>\n

Yet when they began to get bogged down in opposition and skepticism, the Sidewalk crew and Fleissig didn\u2019t bother to internalize what, to my mind, was the single most defining moment in the city\u2019s recent past, which was the resounding defeat of then councilor Doug Ford\u2019s cynical 2012 bid to hijack the Port Land\u2019s planning and development process.<\/p>\n

That episode demonstrated that Torontonians feel a sense of ownership towards the waterfront that runs far deeper than either Fleissig or Doctoroff realized. All that lakefront land wasn\u2019t just a bunch of brownfield waiting to be claimed. It wasn\u2019t for sale. And it wasn\u2019t some kind of zone for experiments.<\/p>\n

Sidewalk\u2019s assumptions about the city\u2019s willingness to bend to its tech-informed neo-liberal will continued to be apparent in the encyclopedic document it released last summer, which included proposals to establish quasi-private forms of governance<\/a> for Quayside \u2013 ideas that WT chair Steve Diamond shot down even before they were made public.<\/p>\n

Even after the apparent detent<\/a>e between WT and Sidewalk late last October, the company continued to grumble about not being allowed to test its technology on the wider canvas of the Port Lands. The company couldn’t seem to accept the reality that the city\u2019s decentralized political culture will, in fact, determine the form of what happens on the waterfront.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, Alphabet, this gigantic corporate blob whose cash and influence encircles humanity, couldn\u2019t accept that a bunch of measly municipal agencies insisted on dictating terms, and so it has left, in what looks — to me — like a huff.<\/p>\n

There are deep lessons to be learned here, and I hope that whomever comes along next with city-building visions for the waterfront has the good sense to internalize the back story and take heed of the politics.<\/p>\n

As the old saying goes, history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. Hopefully, with the next suitor, it will be a case of third time lucky.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the earliest days of Sidewalk Labs’ bid to establish a beachhead on Toronto\u2019s waterfront, the cultural mismatch, for lack of a better term, was always very much in evidence but never fully acknowledged as the determining factor in the fate of the company\u2019s bid to build a new type of smart city. Contrary toContinue reading “LORINC: Sidewalk Labs steps away from Toronto waterfront”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":61749,"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":[18,2,20,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-neighbourhoods","category-politics","category-urban-design","category-waterfront"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: Sidewalk Labs steps away from Toronto waterfront - 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\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Sidewalk Labs steps away from Toronto waterfront - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From the earliest days of Sidewalk Labs’ bid to establish a beachhead on Toronto\u2019s waterfront, the cultural mismatch, for lack of a better term, was always very much in evidence but never fully acknowledged as the determining factor in the fate of the company\u2019s bid to build a new type of smart city. Contrary toContinue reading "LORINC: Sidewalk Labs steps away from Toronto waterfront"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-05-07T17:00:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-05-07T17:49:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/05\/sidewalk-HeroRender_ParliamentCove_V2.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1821\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"928\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John Lorinc\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Spacing\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Spacing\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"John Lorinc\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/\",\"name\":\"LORINC: Sidewalk Labs steps away from Toronto waterfront - Spacing Toronto\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/05\/sidewalk-HeroRender_ParliamentCove_V2.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-05-07T17:00:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-05-07T17:49:11+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#\/schema\/person\/faff9da0e20b8f5223099d707e940d8e\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/05\/sidewalk-HeroRender_ParliamentCove_V2.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/05\/sidewalk-HeroRender_ParliamentCove_V2.png\",\"width\":1821,\"height\":928},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"LORINC: Sidewalk Labs steps away from Toronto waterfront\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/\",\"name\":\"Spacing Toronto\",\"description\":\"Canadian Urbanism Uncovered | Toronto Architecture, Urban Design, Public Transit, City Hall, Parks, Walking, Bikes, Streetscape, History, Waterfront, Maps, Public Spaces\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#\/schema\/person\/faff9da0e20b8f5223099d707e940d8e\",\"name\":\"John Lorinc\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/73e05cb61860b63be76ffccf72a4d736?s=96&d=blank&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/73e05cb61860b63be76ffccf72a4d736?s=96&d=blank&r=g\",\"caption\":\"John Lorinc\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/author\/john\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"LORINC: Sidewalk Labs steps away from Toronto waterfront - Spacing Toronto","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"LORINC: Sidewalk Labs steps away from Toronto waterfront - Spacing Toronto","og_description":"From the earliest days of Sidewalk Labs’ bid to establish a beachhead on Toronto\u2019s waterfront, the cultural mismatch, for lack of a better term, was always very much in evidence but never fully acknowledged as the determining factor in the fate of the company\u2019s bid to build a new type of smart city. Contrary toContinue reading \"LORINC: Sidewalk Labs steps away from Toronto waterfront\"","og_url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/","og_site_name":"Spacing Toronto","article_published_time":"2020-05-07T17:00:19+00:00","article_modified_time":"2020-05-07T17:49:11+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1821,"height":928,"url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/05\/sidewalk-HeroRender_ParliamentCove_V2.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"John Lorinc","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@Spacing","twitter_site":"@Spacing","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"John Lorinc","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/","url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/","name":"LORINC: Sidewalk Labs steps away from Toronto waterfront - Spacing Toronto","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/05\/sidewalk-HeroRender_ParliamentCove_V2.png","datePublished":"2020-05-07T17:00:19+00:00","dateModified":"2020-05-07T17:49:11+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#\/schema\/person\/faff9da0e20b8f5223099d707e940d8e"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/05\/sidewalk-HeroRender_ParliamentCove_V2.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/05\/sidewalk-HeroRender_ParliamentCove_V2.png","width":1821,"height":928},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2020\/05\/07\/lorinc-sidewalk-steps-away-from-toronto-waterfront\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"LORINC: Sidewalk Labs steps away from Toronto waterfront"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#website","url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/","name":"Spacing Toronto","description":"Canadian Urbanism Uncovered | Toronto Architecture, Urban Design, Public Transit, City Hall, Parks, Walking, Bikes, Streetscape, History, Waterfront, Maps, Public Spaces","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#\/schema\/person\/faff9da0e20b8f5223099d707e940d8e","name":"John Lorinc","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/73e05cb61860b63be76ffccf72a4d736?s=96&d=blank&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/73e05cb61860b63be76ffccf72a4d736?s=96&d=blank&r=g","caption":"John Lorinc"},"url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/author\/john\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4051"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61745"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61757,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61745\/revisions\/61757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}