Executive summary In 2017, Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s area of the waterfront and transform it into a high-tech holding company, won a tender put out by the City of Toronto neighborhood. This hype window was completed with public to transform Toronto’s waterfront into one of the world’s Wi-Fi, heated and illuminated sidewalks, and so-called first smart cities. However, in spring 2020 the firm abruptly “raincoats” for buildings, that term having been coined by abandoned the project before it had gone beyond the planning the Toronto-based architecture studio Partisans.3The project and consultation stage (The Guardian, 7 May 2020; https://www. then underwent two changes. First, Sidewalk Labs widened its theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/07/google-sidewalk- ambitions from an initial twelve acres of waterfront to a 190- labs-toronto-smart-city-abandoned). Many actors have acre area that became known as the IDEA District, and then it discussed if the Sidewalk project in Toronto had the nature had to scale back the new plan. Finally, it gave up. and ingredients to become a full smart city project. In a statement released in May 2020, Sidewalk Labs’s CEO Dan Doctoroff said that sustained concerns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic meant that the project was no longer feasible. He wrote, “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” (The Guardian, May 7, 2020). Sidewalk Labs was selected to develop a vision for Quayside in October 2017, following a competitive request for proposals (RfP). Sidewalk Labs released its 1,500-page proposal in June 2019. 1In a sign of its commitment to the project, Sidewalk Source: Sidewalk Labs Labs had established an office in the city, as well as a team staffed by urban planners and public relations experts. Over two and a half years, Sidewalk Labs’s personnel was very committed to making the Quayside project happen, with The end of the Quayside project came suddenly. It marked a the Google subsidiary investing energy, time, people, and stunning downfall for the vision championed by the Canadian resources in the Toronto waterfront. prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, of a community built “from the Internet up.” They had As the project ran into delays and questions over taxation, envisioned a city that was a “fundamentally more sustainable a growing chorus of influential voices in the high-tech and affordable community resulting from innovations in community expressed concern over the proposed smart city. technology and urban design,” Doctoroff wrote in a blog post “No matter what Google is offering, the value to Toronto cannot (The Guardian, May 7, 2020). possibly approach the value your city is giving up,” the venture capitalist Roger McNamee wrote in a letter to Toronto City In a first proposal disclosed in 2017, Sidewalk Labs touted Council (The Guardian, May 7, 2020). autonomous vehicles, as well as cutting-edge wood-frame towers to make housing more affordable (The Guardian, May Many voices expressed opposition to such a project. It was 7, 2020). Initially, the project attracted observers and analysts described by Roger McNamee as “a dystopian vision that had because it involved a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, no place in a democratic society” in his letter to Toronto City Alphabet.2Sidewalk Labs sought to take over a twelve-acre Council. In 2017, Jim Balsillie, the cofounder of BlackBerry (1) https://www.sidewalklabs.com/ (2) https://torontolife.com/city/18-big-thinkers-take-a-critical-look-at-the-sidewalk-labs-plan/ (accessed on 9 June 2021). (3) https://www.sidewalklabs.com/insights/from-building-raincoats-to-condo-manifestos-partisans-is-on-a-mission (accessed on 9 June 2021). 166 Quélin and Smadja | HEC PARIS | SMART CITIES | The sustainable program of six leading cities | 2021