Google‘s subsidiary Sidewalk Labs has cancelled the plan to make a smart city in Canada, citing difficulties due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
For many years, it had followed aspirations to make a digital-first city in Toronto “from the internet up”.
CEO Dan Doctoroff accused “unprecedented economic uncertainty” for renouncing the plan.
The project had proved controversial and Sidewalk Labs had already been forced to reduce its ambitions.
In a blog post, Mr Doctoroff said: “As unprecedented economic uncertainty has set in around the world, and in the Toronto real estate market, it has become too difficult to make the 12-acre project financially viable without sacrificing core parts of the plan we had developed together with Waterfront Toronto to build a truly inclusive, sustainable community.
“I believe the ideas we have developed over the last two-and-a-half years will represent a meaningful contribution to the work of tackling big urban problems, particularly in the areas of affordability and sustainability.”
The vision was to make a city with technology, from autonomous cars to innovative ways of collecting rubbish, and many sensors collecting data on air quality and also the movements of individuals. Buildings would be sustainable and inbuilt radical new ways, and cycle lanes would be heated.
But some questioned how Sidewalk Labs had won the contract. When it emerged that it planned to develop a way larger site than originally stated, a lobby group of citizens opposing the plans emerged, asking why they’d want to be “lab rats” during a digital experiment.
An independent panel was founded to scrutinise its plans and released a report suggesting a number of its ideas were “tech for tech’s sake”, and potentially unnecessary.
Sidewalk Labs was eventually given a tentative green light to continue its plan, but it was heavily scaled back from the 190-acre site it wanted to figure with to a 12-acre piece of land.
It was also told that any data it collected from its sensors would must become a public asset.
Stephen Diamond is chairman of Waterfront Toronto, the body founded to oversee development of the positioning.
