Page 11 - April 2018 Disruption Report Flip Book

SMART CITIES
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purposes. And over time, this backbone of street data will incorporate and guide new modes, from ride-hailing today to self-driving shuttles tomorrow.
If you think of the city as a platform and design in the ability for people to change it as quickly as you and I can customize our iPhones, you make it authentic because it doesn’t just reflect a central plan,” said Aggarwala. “It also reflects the people who live and work there.”
“If Quayside is successful, cities in Canada and elsewhere won’t have any choice but to emulate it, because it would have enormous implications in terms of sustainability and quality of life,” said Christopher De Sousa, director of the school of urban and regional planning at Ryerson University in Toronto.
“There are definitely questions about whether Sidewalk Labs will try to make money by tracking people’s daily interactions,” said David Roberts, who studies cities at the University of Toronto. “What data will be collected, how personal will it be, how will it be used, and who will have access to it?”
Sidewalk will gather only the data needed to solve a given problem, according to Aggarwala.
For example, Sidewalk may utilize a lidar, a device that uses a laser to detect objects, or a low- resolution camera to analyze pedestrian patterns in Quayside. “That way you can capture the information you need but not anything that can be traced back to an individual,” said Aggarwala.
“I think if we can do that and demonstrate how that can improve urban life, then people will be comfortable and give us the license to do it.” Ultimately, Sidewalk expects to license the technology it produces at Quayside to other cities—rather than compile and monetize data through advertising.
“...[I]n a time when Alphabet is building cities, cars are turning into movie theaters, and Facebook has more ‘citizens’ than any government jurisdiction in the world, the purposes and implications of technology are broader and blurrier than ever,” wrote CityLab’s Laura Bliss, who calls for regulating “smart city” technology. “So is the task of making the laws that can keep [data] safe and working for everybody. And it’s probably more important than ever.”
Sidewalk clearly faces skepticism over its ability to overcome the public’s concern about how it uses data and privacy. If it Sidewalk can demonstrate that its intense data-gathering enhances urban living, the Quayside project could provide a model for smart cities around the world, according to Matti Siemiatycki, an expert on geography and planning at the University of Toronto. “With these folks, what’s intriguing is the sky’s the limit in terms of their imagination, the scale
they dream at, and the resources they have at their fingertips,” said Siemiatycki. (MIT Technology Review, Elizabeth Woyke, 02/21/18l Sidewalk Labs Blog, Stephen Smyth, 02/01/18; Press Release, Sidewalk Toronto, 10/17/17; CityLab, Laura Bliss, 04/12/18)
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