Toronto’s Scrapped Smart City Reflects Distrust in Tech

But locals quickly raised concerns about the project’s privacy implications and painted a grim picture of a company galvanizing economic development for the benefit of Silicon Valley rather than Canada.

A high-tech neighborhood that was slated to rise along Toronto’s waterfront, Quayside was the brainchild of Sidewalk Labs, the urban innovation arm of Google parent company Alphabet. Projected to create 44,000 jobs and $14.2 billion annually in GDP for Canada, the interconnected smart city would’ve housed residents in 12 timber high-rises designed ... See more