Introduction 1. Health With over 6.4 million residents and 215,336 businesses 1.1 Basic sanitation (active locations with employees), the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) represents approximately 18.5 percent of Canada’s Water supply and sanitation are an important issue in Canada. GDP (Sidewalk Labs, 2017). The city welcomes one hundred There is a lack of clean drinking water. Despite the federal thousand new immigrants every year. Over 51percent ofgovernment’s commitment to promoting increased cost Toronto’s diverse population, which comprises 240 ethnic recovery—water tariffs in Canada are low, and 44 percent groups, was born outside of Canada (Sidewalk Labs, 2017). of users are not metered—only 50 percent of the cost of maintaining and operating water infrastructure is being North America’s second largest financial center is facing many recovered from users through tariffs (Sidewalk Labs, 2017). problems related to its challenging geographical location and the impacts of climate change. The City of Toronto launched an Each day, the City of Toronto “treats more than one billion RfP to assess the potential of the eastern waterfront and make liters of safe drinking water at four water treatment plants that it an attractive project for urban and economic development. operate on a 24/7 basis” (Sidewalk Labs, 2017; Tap Water in Toronto). To ensure Toronto Water (the city’s water management Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet company founded in 2015, was body) delivers an uninterrupted supply of superior-quality water chosen to deliver significant urban life improvement (Sidewalk in a reliable, cost-effective, and environmentally sound manner, Labs, 2017). Sidewalk prepared a proposal for the City of Toronto, it uses a computerized process control system. winning the RfP to lead the smart city project in the city. Sidewalk Labs sought out first-hand views from more than twenty In order to ensure an adequate water supply, Toronto is split into thousand Torontonians, including at a town hall kickoff. The firm six areas, which are continuously monitored and adjusted based also organized four public round tables, dozens of community on demand. Furthermore, a part of the clean water produced meetings, six topic-specific advisory boards, and hundreds is stored in tanks and reservoirs for use in peak periods and of one-on-one or small-group meetings. Finally, it set up a during emergencies such as fires or power outages. residents’ panel to satisfy requirements for citizen participation. The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (consisting of the fourteen environment ministers from the federal, provincial, and territorial governments) plays an active role in developing the national strategies and guidelines for water supply and sanitation. However, the difficulty in collaborating between different government levels is apparent in the discussion of proposed national municipal wastewater effluent strategies. According to the Canadian Water and Waste-Water Association,6 “Canada faces various provincial and territorial approaches that are not aligned with federal legislation.” 1.1.1 Storm water strategy to reduce cost and increase water management efficiency Source: weber-DSxIjXSxjTI-unsplash Given that the city’s combined sewer and storm water infrastructure has the potential to contaminate Lake Ontario Our analysis of Toronto’s smart city project differs from that (whose drinking water serves nine million people), Toronto of the other cities that we have included in this ebook, since has taken decisions to manage storm water more effectively. the project was essentially the work of a Google subsidiary, Resilience is part of sustainability. Waterfront Toronto set up namely Sidewalk Labs. In conducting an in-depth analysis a flood mitigation program at a cost of 1.25 billion Canadian of the Sidewalk Labs project in Toronto, we examined over dollars (Sidewalk Labs, 2017: 132) with a view to renaturalizing one thousand pages of project documentation produced by the Don River in order to help protect against storm water Sidewalk, comparing the data we collected to that published overflow. Treatment facilities to filter all storm water for by the IMD World Competitiveness Center. pollutants before sending it back to the river were considered a (6) https://cwwa.ca/ (accessed on 9 June 2021). 169 Quélin and Smadja | HEC PARIS | SMART CITIES | The sustainable program of six leading cities | 2021