As part of this effort, Sidewalk Labs planned to “build technical • Might Singapore’s and Amsterdam’s smart city approaches, and policy-based controls to provide robust assurance to the based on the coordination of different actors, ultimately community” (Ibid., 2017b: 410) that its system was behaving prove to be more appropriate? consistently with the UDT expectations. Finally, Sidewalk • Did Sidewalk consider Toronto to be a “living Laboratory”? Labs evaluated the growing field of transparency for machine If yes, was it ethical to do so, and does that approach learning and artificial intelligence (AI) (Ibid., 2017b: 376, 410- ultimately respect people’s privacy? 411, 414, and 424-425). Broadly, Sidewalk Labs believed that machine learning should be as auditable and transparent in its Our analysis of the abandoned Sidewalk Labs project decisions as traditional software and engineering are. and Toronto more broadly has allowed us to understand the functioning and the process related to a smart city’s 8. Conclusion implementation. From our point of view, the Sidewalk project was well designed and considered all the fundamental aspects As we know, after more than two years of exploratory work and that could be optimized to generate a carbon-free city while fifty million Canadian dollars of investment, on May 07, 2020, enhancing people’s comfort and health. Sidewalk Labs announced the end of this project. However, when we start to think a bit more about the actual The president of Sidewalk Labs, Dan Doctoroff, put forward an project, one central question could remain: Would you feel economic reason to justify the final withdrawal of this project. comfortable and safe if you knew that one actor controlled Indeed, COVID-19 would inevitably be a crisis with strong everything in your city? repercussions on the city’s real-estate market, making the project hardly viable. The reputation and excellence of Sidewalk Labs (Google) in big data fuels fear of its potential hegemony. This fear evokes an omnipotence, a takeover by an actor operating outside the general interest. This illustrates the following three well-known principles: fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD). These doubts and fears excessively evoke the prospect of a smart city that is disembodied, safe, cold, and techno-centric (Scola, 2018). Opponents or critical observers mobilize fear of a “surveillance capitalism,” itself associated, potentially, with the establishment of the concept of “social credit for citizens” currently being developed in China. The Sidewalk project seemed to be well thought out and designed for the citizens of Toronto. However, many ethical questions can be asked regarding the implementation of this project: •Can a single actor who controls an entire city (and its data) represent an issue in terms of ethics and privacy? •Could people have trusted Sidewalk regarding data security and implementation of such a project? •Is the definition of a smart city a city where everything is controlled and managed by technology? •Did the project design reflect the wishes of Torontonians for their city? •If the project had been accepted by the City of Toronto, who would have been in charge of the city? Could governance issues have arisen in the medium to long run? 188 Quélin and Smadja | HEC PARIS | SMART CITIES | The sustainable program of six leading cities | 2021