Google's Sidewalk Labs spent years on a Toronto smart city — then abandoned it

In October 2017, Sidewalk Labs — a Google/Alphabet subsidiary — won a competition to develop Quayside, a 12-acre neighbourhood on Toronto's waterfront. The project was billed as a testbed for smart-city technology: sensor-laden streets, autonomous vehicle lanes, modular timber buildings, and a data-driven approach to urban management. Sidewalk Labs planned to eventually scale the project across 800 acres of Toronto's Port Lands, one of the largest undeveloped urban areas in North America.

The project ran into immediate resistance over data governance. Critics warned that the sensor network would collect unprecedented amounts of personal data, and that Sidewalk Labs had not been transparent about who would own or control it. The crisis deepened in 2019 when an internal document called 'The Yellow Book' was leaked. It revealed that Sidewalk Labs had considered proposals to levy its own taxes, control public services, collect location data on all community members, and implement a social credit system.

Waterfront Toronto's own Digital Strategy Advisory Panel criticized the project as 'tech for tech's sake' and demanded stronger privacy safeguards. The public consultation process that was supposed to build trust instead became a forum for sustained opposition. In May 2020, Sidewalk Labs abandoned the project, citing economic uncertainty from the COVID-19 pandemic. The real cause was the accumulated loss of public trust, which the pandemic merely made final. Sidewalk Labs was absorbed into Google in December 2021 after CEO Daniel Doctoroff stepped down.