•Providing access to financial benefits available through the 4.2.2 Collaborating with Toronto public library Ontario Works program; Sidewalk Labs expressed a wish to collaborate with the Toronto •Connecting people with health, housing, childcare, and other Public Library (TPL) in order to encourage opportunities for social services; learning throughout the community. The two organizations •Providing referrals for education, training, and employment explored opportunities to seamlessly integrate the library’s supports. presence throughout the whole IDEA District, aiming to promote a “learning is happening everywhere” approach. For those without smartphones or who require digital support, Sidewalk Labs planned “to provide free-to-use devices, tech That approach would have included opportunities such as support staff, and digital literacy programming in the Civic pop-up learning labs or lending services. To help students to Assembly and the Care Collective” (Sidewalk Labs, 2017b: 393). acquire new skills, TPL has been developing new classes in, for This digital infrastructure could have helped the population to example, AI and algorithmic literacy. Sidewalk Labs wanted to seamlessly leverage digital tools for daily activities, thrive as support TPL’s work in this area by collaborating with institutions workers in the digital economy, and access critical services such as George Brown College.22TPL is also considering such as government and healthcare support. The idea behind creating a pop-up library station that would allow residents to this service was to “enable service providers to develop digital book a private session or meetings quickly. tools that they know can reach and support every community member” (Sidewalk Labs, 2017b: 393). 4.2.3 Ensuring proximity to open spaces and adaptable classrooms 4.2 Access to schools Sidewalk argued that locating a school near to a vibrant open space (see Section 3 of this chapter) would allow students to Toronto is home to an extensive network of excellent academic learn from real-world situations. Teachers could, for example, and research institutions that have consistently placed the city generate opportunities for students to learn from community among the global leaders in higher education. members. Furthermore, Sidewalk believed, siting a school near housing and complementary community services (for example, The city is currently planning a 25 percent increase in the number primary healthcare and childcare) would ensure convenient of sciences, tech, engineering, and math graduates over the next access and save households time. The adaptable classroom five years (Sidewalk Labs, 2017). Toronto’s academic network has spaces that Sidewalk envisaged could have been valuable already embraced technology-related fields, and recently, leading for teachers and students, and they could have enhanced the institutions have invested in expanding graduate programs and21 quality of classes. Indeed, classrooms with modular furniture research opportunities focused on urban innovation. Not only and movable walls allow teachers to test new models of does Toronto’s academic network produce top talent, but it also, learning—for example, the flipped classroom, where students enabled in part by Canada’s progressive policies that promote receive lectures outside the classroom and participate in one- and facilitate inclusion, draws in senior academics, researchers, on-one and group work within the school (Sidewalk Labs, and students from around the globe. 2017a: 229; Sidewalk Labs, 2017b: 45). 4.2.1 Collaborating with the Toronto district school board 4.3 Lifelong opportunities Sidewalk’s strategy regarding children’s access to school would have been based on collaborating with the Toronto District Sidewalk Labs believed that strong economic growth for School Board (TDSB) and the Ontario Ministry of Education Toronto required a decisive commitment to inclusion. To to ensure that families had access to best-in-class schools ensure a lifelong opportunities approach, Sidewalk planned (Sidewalk Labs, 2017a: 228-229).To help accelerate this to take a proactive “community-benefits approach” to ensure development, Sidewalk Labs proposed to work with the TDSB economic opportunities were open to a wide range of residents. in using up to “sixty thousand square feet on the lower floors of This approach included creating training and employment mixed-use buildings for an elementary school that would have opportunities for everyone (for example, the unemployed and welcomed around six hundred students” (Sidewalk Labs, 2017a: older adults) to ensure a consistent approach to economic 228). Part of the ground floor would also potentially have been inclusion. adapted as a space for a childcare facility. (21) OCAD University, Ryerson University, University of Toronto, and York University. To complement, UTAGA (The University of Toronto Association of Geography Alumni) and TUGS (The Toronto Undergraduate Geography Society) organized a workshop on “Sidewalk Labs and the Public: Toronto’s Tech Utopia?” on February 24, 2020. (22) https://www.georgebrown.ca/ 180 Quélin and Smadja | HEC PARIS | SMART CITIES | The sustainable program of six leading cities | 2021