Why Pursuing Urban Utopias Isn't Smart | The Agenda

In 2017, the City of Toronto embarked on a project with a subsidiary of Google called Sidewalk Labs. The idea was to develop a parcel of Toronto’s industrial waterfront in order to create a “smart city”. At first, the idea was met with a lot of enthusiasm, but eventually a number of concerned citizens, journalists and planners started to raise questions about data privacy, competition and public policy issues that Sidewalk Labs could not answer. What happened to Sidewalk Toronto and why are we so drawn to the idea of futuristic urban utopias? To help answer that: John Lorinc, author of "Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias;" Josh O’Kane, author of "Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy;" and Vass Bednar, Executive Director, Master of Public Policy in Digital Society Program at McMaster University.
00:00 Intro
0:49 What is a Smart City?
3:49 Messy Urbanism
4:37 Speed Cameras
7:59 Waste Water Surveillance
9:03 Managing The Electrical Grid
11:19 Sidewalk Labs Toronto
17:49 When Did Sidewalk Go Off the Rail?
19:51 Privacy Issues
23:20 Surveillance Tech
24:20 Competition
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