TECHNOLOGY: THE NEXT INTERNET

Most descriptions of smart cities identify several key technical systems that provide their foundation. Among the many ways to describe their configuration, I think it is most useful to view them as comprising the Next Internet, which brings together the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, big data analytics and advanced telecommunications systems.

The Internet of Things

The IoT refers to a system that installs sensors and processing devices into everyday physical objects and living organisms, including people. For the city, it means embedding monitoring and data-gathering technology into roads, sidewalks, buildings, streets and their lighting, as well as throughout homes, schools and workplaces. Wherever they are located, these sensors form a network of things that accumulates vast amounts of data and delivers it to cloud computing systems for storage and processing with big data analytics. The result is real-time monitoring of transportation, communication and energy use. Advocates hope the IoT will enable faster response times to everyday problems and major disasters.

One outcome is the development of algorithms or decisionmaking rules that enable autonomous action. Software powers artificial intelligence (AI) systems that use data to create ‘if … then’ rules triggering responses based on changing data. For example, drawing from crime statistics and facial recognition technology, law enforcement has developed algorithms that follow some variation of ‘if you spot a face that looks like this, raise or lower your suspicion level’. Since databases are social constructions that categorise and label with all the subjectivity and prejudice found in society, it is not surprising that algorithms embody racist, sexist and class-based biases. Consequently, algorithms need to be assessed critically and with a keen eye on the social structural conditions that give rise to AI-based decision rules.

The IoT is made possible by advances in the ability to miniaturise scanning devices and provide them with sufficient processing and transmission power to monitor activity, analyse usage and deliver results over digital networks. In one sense, the IoT realises an old vision, once featured in ads for General Electric products, of ‘bringing things to life’, by giving them AI capabilities. These objects – what the philosopher of science Bruno Latour calls actants – in his actor-network theory, can form relationships with other objects and with living things. As one New York City smart city advocate put it:

can your payment at a parking meter tell the street light that you’re there and accomplish some action? Can we have trash cans interact with other pieces of street furniture that is responsive to what is happening around it?²

The Internet that we have known for 30 or so years mainly connects people to other people. The IoT adds a universe of things to the network of networks. There are those who would go as far as to say that the smart city is nothing more than ‘a large-scale example of applying IoT concepts into a practical, socially dynamic application’.³ At this point, only a tiny fraction of objects, about 1%, are digitally connected in IoT networks in a world where only 40% of the population makes use of the traditional Internet at least once per month. Consequently, as the numbers inevitably climb, there are high expectations for enormous growth, especially among business organisations.

Cloud Computing

The brilliance of the original Internet was figuring out how to get a decentralised, distributed world of servers to communicate and connect users through simple, universal software standards. This began to change with the growth of cloud computing, symbolised best by the enormous data centres that have sprung up, seemingly overnight, all over the world. These are huge, windowless buildings housing thousands of digital servers. Before there was an IoT, cloud computing began the process of transitioning to the Next Internet.

The cloud, as it is called, is a system for storing, processing and distributing data, applications, and software using remote computers that provide digital services on demand for a fee. The term ‘cloud’ originated in the diagrams of network engineers responsible for designing telecommunications systems. The nodes or switching points in their diagrams were typically designated by icons that resembled clouds and, before long, distant data storage came to be described as cloud computing. This is distinguished from storing and processing data locally, such as on a personal computer or in a data centre located on the premises of an office. Because of growing data storage and processing requirements, accelerating with the application of IoT devices throughout cities, organisations are increasingly moving their data to distant data centres linked through high-speed telecommunication systems. The transition is not always easy or comfortable for the individuals and organisations contemplating moving to the cloud. Loss of control, including the spectre of making valuable data more easily available to hackers, among other security threats, raise significant commercial and privacy issues that can slow the migration of data to the cloud. More attention to security, including the expansion of blockchain, and perhaps even the adoption of quantum computing, as it emerges from years as little more than a laboratory curiosity, might help address some of these issues. But there is too much uncertainty about both blockchain and quantum to think that they will provide a comprehensive resolution to security concerns any time soon.

It is also uncertain that distant cloud data centres can provide the response times necessary to operate IoT devices properly, particularly when connectivity inevitably grows from the single-digit percentage of objects currently networked. As a result, there are those who believe that smart networks will need to include some processing power located closer to devices, for example, within the sensors of autonomous vehicles. These so-called edge computing systems will be especially important when telecommunications connectivity is spotty. This wrinkle in the cloud does not diminish the importance of data centres and has certainly not yet slowed data migration to the cloud. For example, Apple is so confident that we are only in the early stages of data centre expansion, that between 2017 and 2018, it purchased 7,000 acres of land to build a new generation of data centres.

Cloud computing also comes with a cost to the environment that will only grow as more data centres are built and as climate change reaches into everyday life. Server factories require large tracts of land and depend on massive supplies of water to prevent servers from overheating. Data centres put intense pressure on electrical supply grids and add massively to electronic or e-waste. All of this belies the image of an immaterial cloud. Some cloud companies have been responding with growing reliance on sustainable energy sources, but competitive pressures lead others to choose the least cost and that often means the most environmentally unfriendly alternatives. The rise in popularity of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, whose massive data-processing requirements require significant cloud server capacity and acres of data centres, has created some of the ugliest environmental impacts. This reality leaves utilities caught between a critical public and a voracious new sector looking for nearly unlimited power. For utilities to reject the industry’s demands inevitably invites expensive legal battles. As one utility executive put it, ‘If you can afford 100 megawatts, you can afford a lot of attorneys’.⁴

Big Data Analytics

Data may not be the new oil, as some have suggested, but its value distinctly depends on what can be done with it. Sure, IoT devices accelerate the amount of digital information and cloud data centres expand the capacity to store it. But data becomes genuinely valuable only when it is packaged in a form that enhances the value of existing products and services or makes possible the development of entirely new ones. For this, we turn to the third leg of the Next Internet, big data analytics, which refers to how experts, increasingly with titles like ‘data scientist’, make use of the data gathered by IoT sensors and store and process that in the cloud. Specifically, data analytics involves taking a large and, almost always, quantitative data set, and it examines the specific ways the data does or does not correlate, in order to draw conclusions about current behaviour and attitudes, and to make accurate predictions. It is one thing to gather data on cars travelling down highways or city streets and quite another to process it in a form that leads to adjustments in the timing of traffic lights or in the efficient use of high-occupancy vehicle lanes. It is one thing to put cameras on street lights and quite another to deploy the images gathered so that police can better monitor locations where violent crime is a serious problem. It is relatively easy to collect data on how users surf the Internet, but more difficult to package it for companies who want to improve targeted advertising.

The general aim of big data analytics is to process vast new stores of data and make sense of it all by producing algorithms or rules that specify conclusions to be drawn, or actions to be taken, under specific conditions. Given the limitations of quantitative correlational analysis, especially the absence of historical context, conceptual clarity and subjectivity (qualitative data is ignored or poorly translated into numbers), such analysis is not always accurate. Incidents of big data failures are mounting, on such projects as seasonal flu forecasting and building models for economic development. Privacy concerns are also growing. Almost every IoT device gathers usage information. As a result, it came as no surprise to those who follow big data analytics when a 2018 report noted that ‘smart’ thermometers send data to drug companies so that they can deliver customised messages about their remedies to users.⁵ There are also many opportunities to make mischief with data, as we learned most alarmingly from the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Nevertheless, smart city advocates believe that these problems can be managed so that big data analytics can be deployed to provide real-time analyses of city functions to help make municipalities operate more efficiently and effectively.

These three converging technological systems, literally connected through wired and wireless high-speed telecommunications, provide the IT infrastructure for what is anticipated to be the leap to smart cities. The smart city movement is spawning an entire industry comprised of engineers developing technologies and applications, as well as tech-savvy city planners and designers responsible for integrating these into existing or entirely new cities. Reports on the economic prospects for smart city technologies tend to agree that this is an industry about to hit explosive growth. One study concluded that the smart city market will be worth $1.2 trillion by 2019 and $2.75 trillion by 2023.⁶ By 2020, forecasts call for 600 smart cities throughout the world.⁷

SMART TRANSPORTATION, SMART ENERGY, SMART COMMUNICATION

Among smart city applications, increased efficiencies in transportation, energy and communication receive a great deal of attention. Smart city advocates like to talk about cities clogged with unmanageable traffic and demonstrate how, in the words of one, ‘a smart city moves past all that’ with autonomous vehicles, traffic signals that respond to current demand, lanes that change size and direction with congestion patterns, and kerbside parking that is informative and responsive to changing demand.8 Parking garages that identify the number of spaces available and also guide cars to vacant spaces are part of the smart transportation equation. In addition, sensors serve a policing function, with constant surveillance to spot and record traffic violations, thereby enhancing road safety. They also strengthen the public transportation system by enabling flexible scheduling and routing of buses, trains and aeroplanes.

Supporters also focus on the efficient production and distribution of energy resources made possible by Next Internet technologies. As with transportation, much of the benefit is associated with constant surveillance. In the home, this means programmable Wi-Fi thermostats, lighting that is not only energy-efficient (as much LED lighting as possible) but also manageable through a smartphone, and smart metering of energy use. Some cities, mine included, also provide monthly alerts to customers on energy use in their city, their community and on their street, in order to encourage customers to use heating, cooling and lighting more sparingly. Smart street lighting adjusts to environmental changes and monitors street activity. Increasingly, as residents of San Diego and a handful of other cities have come to learn, the ‘eyes on the street’ are embedded in street lighting. Smart buildings, offices and factories operate on the same principles: 24-7 monitoring, data collection and management through algorithms that regularly adjust to changing conditions.

Smart city proponents round out the trio of essential elements by calling for universal access to high-speed communication, particularly through the deployment of 5G telecommunications services. This may take place through private telecommunications carriers or public Wi-Fi systems, such as one pioneered in New York City. The basic idea is that the more communication there is, the better a city is able to understand the needs of its residents and build a smart community. Relatedly, citizens need to have access to information and opportunities to participate in civic affairs. Opinions vary on precisely what participation means, with some believing that online communication helps overcome democratic deficits and with others fearing that an excess of participation may undermine effective decision-making.

BIG SAVINGS

Notwithstanding these concerns, there are enormous expectations for cost savings. According to a report produced by ABI Research, the typical smart city government in the United States could save as much as $4.95 billion annually with upgraded smart buildings and street lighting leading the way. Repair and maintenance costs are expected to decline by 30%. Businesses in the smart city will be able to save an additional $14 billion in areas that include smart manufacturing plants, as well as more energy-efficient freight transportation using drones, semi- and fully-autonomous vans and trucks. Finally, smart city advocates expect that citizens can save another $27 billion per year by deploying smart meters and microgrids, and even save on school costs through hybrid systems that make extensive use of online technology. In total, the think-tank expects worldwide savings of $5 trillion yearly by 2022 for the 75 largest smart cities.9 Moreover, looking at the period from 2018 to 2026, the report sees smart cities achieving incremental growth of over 5%, and smart technologies driving more than $20 trillion in additional economic benefits.¹⁰

Shifting from financial to time savings, the technology pioneer Intel produced a report that examined 20 cities across four types of Next Internet applications: mobility, health care, public safety and productivity. It concluded that such things as improved public health and safer streets could save citizens an average of 125 hours per year, thereby adding a little over 5 days to each person’s year.11 Such reports are used to justify big spending on IoT technologies, particularly retrofitting urban infrastructure such as street lighting (increasingly referred to as ‘digital infrastructure beacons’), roads, schools, health care facilities and offices. In a 2018 report by the think-tank IDC, such spending was expected to reach $80 billion worldwide, rising to $135 billion by 2021.¹²

COMMAND AND CONTROL IN THE SMART CITY

Managing the vast array of urban technology applications that make up smart cities is an enormous challenge. To do so, big technology companies have urged civic officials to build centralised monitoring and decision-making facilities. IBM was the first to succeed, constructing one for Rio de Janeiro that has become the model for many smart cities. Called the Rio Operations Center and resembling a military ‘war room’, it started up at the end of 2010. As is so often the case, a crisis precipitated an opportunity for the authorities to centralise monitoring and control in the region. A massive storm had led to flooding that killed 70 Rio residents and many more outside the city. In the wake of this tragedy, the city’s mayor teamed with IBM to integrate the data-processing and monitoring activities of some 30 municipal and state agencies as well as utilities, in a single structure. The official aim of the Rio Operations Center is to enable the city to run more efficiently especially during emergencies. The Center integrates key departments, such as police and fire, and makes possible centralised monitoring of emergency situations, as well as surveillance of weather, traffic, electricity, trash pickups, recycling, disease outbreaks, gas and water. The facility also contains a ‘crisis room’ that permits the mayor to meet with advisors and make executive decisions when faced with security threats. The Center’s staff of some 70 analysts, all dressed in white jumpsuits, sit before banks of screens. An enormous wall monitor is divided into grids containing live video feeds from surveillance cameras, along with other data. Google satellite and Street View maps are integrated into the system, enabling analysts to overlay additional data and get closeups. The facility has the capacity to locate and identify every public vehicle, such as a city bus, at any time.

Centralisation has its merits, but the Rio Operations Center is notable for its tall gates, tight security and near complete lack of transparency. Data from monitoring devices, including video cameras stationed all over the city, enters the facility and feeds into a centralised decision-making process that has practically no citizen input. The Center was used to monitor protests against the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, both held in Brazil. The former mayor of Rio de Janeiro, who has promoted the project on the TED lecture circuit, boasted in a promotional film about these surveillance capabilities: ‘the operations center allows us to have people looking into every corner of the city 24 hours a day, 7 days a week’.¹³ A research assessment of the Center raised serious concerns:

While the use of these systems in Brazil is quite recent, it would appear that smart-city technologies are not being used to solve problems of radical inequality, or systemic poor governance, or compromised urban planning agendas – all of which continue to be the ‘dumbest’ elements of Rio de Janeiro.¹⁴

The Rio government responded to criticisms with a few modifications (it subsequently built an accessible website). Nevertheless, the first fruit of IBM’s ‘smarter city’ initiative, a $4 billion urban surveillance operation, is still shrouded in controversy. In addition to the concern about surveillance, there are those who worry that the Center is more flashy than functional. According to smart cities expert Anthony Townsend:

Urban security experts with whom I have spoken are sceptical that it will have any significant impact on law enforcement and technology experts point out that beyond the video streams there has been little investment in new infrastructure to feed realtime data to the Center.¹⁵

It appears to Townsend that looking smart is often more important to civic officials than actually being smart and that this need to appear smart was driving the mayor and other elected officials ‘into the arms of engineers’.¹⁶

The idea of a centralised command centre for smart city applications has spread to other locales. The German tech company Siemens, which has invested heavily in urban technology, built a City Cockpit for Singapore and bragged that it enables ‘real-time government’:

Here, state-of-the-art information and communication technology (ICT) enables the mayor and other decision-makers to track and analyze processes in their city in real time. All of the important information flows into a central system that processes the data for convenient display and indicates to what extent specified objectives are being met.¹⁷

According to the company, the launch of the City Cockpit was followed by 200 groups of visitors from around the world looking to learn about the best ways to integrate the vast stores of data produced by their growing monitoring systems. This step was followed up by another joint Siemens-Singapore project that produced a ‘Digitalization Hub’. Launched in 2017, it centralises the development of smart city applications for the city-state and the entire Southeast Asia region. Like Rio, Singapore has raised alarm bells about surveillance and centralisation. As a result, not all such efforts have succeeded. When, in 2014, technology companies, including Google, convinced the city of Oakland, California to create a centralised facility to coordinate police and other surveillance operations in the eerily named Domain Awareness Center, mass protests led to cancellation of the project.18 Chapter ⁸ takes a closer look at these concerns. At this point, it is important to understand that the key technical systems providing the foundation for smart cities, primarily the IoT, cloud computing and big data analytics, create significant surveillance opportunities. These provide enticing opportunities for governments interested in deepening control, corporations that want to market technologies, services and data, and hackers looking to make mischief.

GOOGLE TORONTO AND IT COMES UP NEW YORK

One of the phrases I began to hear with surprising frequency when I moved to Canada was ‘world-class’. Living in the United States for the first 36 years of my life, it was rare to hear the term used. To speak of New York, Washington, DC or Los Angeles, as world-class would be considered redundant and hence unnecessary. Canadians, I quickly learned, were not satisfied to have the Canadian best. It had to be world-class. For Canadians, references to New York-style anything, the Harvard of the North, or the Paris of North America were far from unusual. This remains especially the case for Toronto where aspirations to world-class stature, which would see it join the ranks of global cities like New York, London and Tokyo, are a regular feature of public discourse. As the saying goes, watch what you wish for. The most recent Toronto–New York entanglement, this time over their similar smart city makeovers, reveals a great deal about the political economy of technology enabled urban areas. The coming of the smart city has brought Toronto and New York together in more ways than one and each provides important insights into the problems and the potential for a smart city future. Both places exemplify the ageing metropolis that is open to urban renewal with smart city technology. Enter Google, which wants to lead the remake in both cities, and, in the process, win control over prime real estate and the data generated by those who use its redevelopment space. The company has been in Manhattan since 2010 when it paid $1.8 billion for a 2.9-million-feet-square building that has served as the company’s headquarters in the city. In 2018 Google expanded across the street by purchasing the iconic Chelsea Market, a 1.2-million-feet-square building for $2.4 billion. According to one Manhattan tech executive,

The modern tech sector began on the West Coast when it was about developing new technology and programming. It’s now about the implementation and application of technology. And that’s presented an opportunity for New York, the business capital of the world. The talent pool is here.¹⁹

Shortly after it was revealed that Amazon would locate one half of its second headquarters in New York City (the other is to be built in the Washington, DC suburbs) to house 25,000 employees, Google announced that it would be doubling the size of its New York City staff for a total of 20,000 employees, most of whom will be located in Manhattan. Amazon’s decision to cancel its incentive-laden deal with New York, in the face of massive opposition, leaves Google’s presence in the Big Apple all the more significant.

In addition to making New York the company’s first engineering centre outside of Silicon Valley, Google assisted in the creation of Cornell Tech, a new academic campus in the city focussing on technology and entrepreneurship. In 2015, the company established a new unit called Sidewalk Labs to promote urban redevelopment and it immediately took to developing a free public Wi-Fi system for the city as well as incubating a handful of companies that aim to extend its digital ecosystem in the provision of social services like health care.

At about the same time that Google was expanding in Manhattan, the company set its sights on Toronto, promising to turn a valuable parcel of land in the downtown waterfront, long gone to seed, into a model smart city. Specifically, Sidewalk Labs travelled north and proposed to create a futuristic community of apartments and condos, offices, schools, roads, parks and entertainment venues, all equipped with the latest in Next Internet technology to gather and use data on just about everything. To acknowledge this ‘world-class’ moment, the Google launch in Toronto featured speeches by Canada’s Prime Minister, the premier of Ontario, the mayor of Toronto and the chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. All hailed the project as an opportunity for Toronto to join the ranks of the world’s elite smart cities and provide a model for cities around the globe.

The specific plans for the Toronto project have changed over time and will likely continue to evolve. What is clear is that Sidewalk Labs, with the agreement of Waterfront Toronto, a quasi-governmental body created by the federal, provincial and city governments, and comprised of developers and public figures, received approval to build on land near the city’s downtown and fronting on Lake Ontario. It is, in the New York Times description, ‘the closest thing anyone has seen to a tech company that takes the reins in a major city’. As such, Toronto fulfils the dream of Eric Schmidt, a Google founder and executive chairman of Alphabet, to demonstrate what ‘we could do if someone would just give us a city and put us in charge’.²⁰ There have also been discussions about developing a much larger adjacent area. In all, the city has about 800 acres of waterfront land available for development. While the focus has been on building a model smart neighbourhood, the goal is to expand on this in Toronto and make Canada’s largest municipality a model for smart cities around the world. In February 2019, Google proposed to collect a share of property taxes and development fees that normally go to the province of Ontario, in return for building its ‘world-class’ smart city.²¹ Resisting any restraint on hyperbole, the company proposes to construct what it calls ‘the world’s first neighborhood built from the internet up’.²² Sidewalk Labs provides examples of what this means:

• Modular buildings that can shift from housing to retail and back again.
• Monitors that track noise and pollution (likely through sensor-equipped traffic lights).
• Adaptive traffic lanes and traffic signals.
• Self-driving private and public vehicles.
• Underground tunnels that accommodate delivery trucks and keep them off the streets (reminiscent of Disney’s original plan for Epcot).
• Packages delivered with the aid of drones.
• Ride-sharing autonomous taxis (taxibots).
• Heated bicycle paths and sidewalks that melt snow.
• A carbon-neutral thermal energy grid.
• Sensors that monitor and enable the separation of waste from recycling.
• A digital infrastructure that provides ubiquitous connectivity for all.

Sidewalk Labs also plans to create an innovation centre that will incubate technology companies developing applications for the Toronto neighbourhood.

Toronto’s smart city connection to New York extends to more than a similar corporate blueprint for technology-rich redevelopment. The cities also share the project leadership of a man who opens his book about transforming the Big Apple, Greater Than Ever: New York’s Big Comeback, with the words: ‘I vividly remember my first visit to New York City; it was hate at first sight’. For Daniel L. Doctoroff, the man who would lead Sidewalk Labs in New York and in Toronto, this was more than just a catchy opening. Although not very clear about why, there is little doubt that he really hated New York. All he recalls is a view of high-rise apartment towers and a young boy’s shout from the back seat of the family car: ‘I am never going to live in this city’, followed by a happy return to his suburban Michigan home.²³

One can forgive a 10-year-old for feeling a bit of terror when seeing the city for the first time. Although, frankly, I cannot help but recall how much I loved the city in 1958 when I was 10 and I have continued my deep affection for New York in all the years thereafter. It was a magical place for a working-class kid growing up in Manhattan where everything was just a walk or a 15-cent subway ride away. I loved the diversity that later enabled a teenager to walk to the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village to hear Richie Havens sing ‘Here Comes the Sun’ on one weekend, then go to a repertory theatre a few blocks away to see a performance of Euripides’s Trojan Women on another weekend, or to Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden for the best in sports. I knew, or felt like I knew, practically every museum, bookstore, and Manhattan street. Admittedly, there was dirt, crime, noise, corruption and worse, but I cannot imagine a richer place for a tenement kid to grow up.

I never fully appreciated the contrast between hate for the city and the feeling of interconnected freedom that New Yorkers and those who love the city experience so much of the time, until I heard it described by the novelist Zadie Smith. She wrote on the subject immediately after coming to terms with a terrorist shooting near Stuyvesant High School in Lower Manhattan. Smith speaks of New York’s

fair weather friends, the kind who celebrate us in our tragic moments but affect to despise us in our everyday mode. The same people who claim to believe that the only meaningful societal bonds are fixed and solid and unbroken – blood, nation, faith – and so can never truly comprehend a city like New York in its everyday mode, in which bonds gather and dissipate with a dizzying fluidity and yet, for the brief duration that they are in place, can display a mighty strength.²⁴

I have felt that strength many times over in New York and other big cities. It is what makes cities great and, with or without mediating technologies, it is the ‘dizzying fluidity’ that helps makes them smart.

Foregoing his childhood promise, Doctoroff returned to New York City, albeit reluctantly, but for the same reason millions of other people ‘from away’ come to the Big Apple: to make money. So even though, after graduate school, he and his partner agreed that ‘New York was the last place we expected to end up’, a job offer at Lehman Brothers, then one of the most prestigious investment firms in the world, proved too tempting to pass up. Renting a spacious Gramercy Park apartment down the street from Park Avenue, Doctoroff complained about the tawdry state of the neighbourhood, particularly the prostitutes and drug dealers. Years of investment banking made Doctoroff rich and when Michael Bloomberg was elected Mayor of New York in 2002, not long after the 9/11 attacks, he tapped Doctoroff to become deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding. The new deputy mayor brought with him many of his associates in the financial industry and, in addition to the job of rebuilding Lower Manhattan, he worked on a plan to reshape New York so that it might win a bid for the 2012 Olympic Games, a dream of his dating back to 1994. Doctoroff held the deputy mayor position until 2008 when Bloomberg engineered a change in the city charter enabling him to eliminate term limits and run for a third term as the city’s mayor. The deputy mayor was rewarded with the position of president of Bloomberg’s business information company, aiming to expand the firm from a lucrative, if small, provider of economic data to subscribers of Bloomberg’s terminals, into a news organisation that served companies worldwide. Doctoroff left Bloomberg in 2015 to become the founding CEO of Sidewalk Labs.

There are conflicting views of the Bloomberg-Doctoroff impact on New York, including the efforts to use information technology to join the ranks of established smart cities. Doctoroff’s book concludes that the city made a ‘big comeback’ and is ‘better than ever’. For Jeremiah Moss, whose popular blog Vanishing New York was turned into a book by that name, the opposite is true: ‘The spirit of the city as we knew it has vanished in the shadow of luxury condo towers, rampant greed and suburbanization’.²⁵ Moss and others cite changes in zoning that permitted more high-rise luxury housing and the growth of private governance through the increased power of corporate Business Improvement Districts (BIDs). These are areas controlled by local companies that, in return for paying an additional tax levy, are given power over a range of activities from sanitation to culture. In fact, one analyst looks out over the now 75 BIDs and worriedly concludes that they have become the ‘cultural programmers’ of New York City streets, replacing the public art of the city’s diverse communities with business approved and tourist-friendly kitsch.²⁶ Then there are the public–private partnerships that tend to be public in name only, or only when the partnership fails and the city is left responsible for a mountain of debt. There is a case to be made that New York’s zoning regulations were arcane and needed upgrading. The massive loss of its manufacturing base left the city with areas zoned for industry that would never again be home to manufacturers. However, instead of taking advantage of an opportunity to restructure zoning and related planning tools to promote affordable housing and support small businesses, the city government fell into the laps of big developers who clamoured for high-end/high-return investment.

As a result, skyrocketing housing prices have driven the working class out of Manhattan to the outermost reaches of New York’s other boroughs, or out of the city entirely. At the same time, high rents made it impossible for small and independent retailers to survive and many of these were replaced by stores marked with the names and the merchandise of global brands. Builders of luxury towers receive big tax breaks and the evictions of residents who stand in their way have accelerated. For these reasons, a place once characterised by the diversity of its residents, is increasingly a city for the rich and for tourists. For example, the ‘Little Italy’ neighbourhood in Lower Manhattan, where I spent my youth and which helped generations to enter the American middle class, no longer supports an Italian American community. Although branded Little Italy, with restaurants and shops that sell Italian food and products, hardly any Italians actually live in the neighbourhood anymore. The 2000 census recorded 8.25% of residents claiming Italian ancestry, the same as in the entire City of New York. The 2010 census recorded no one living there who was born in Italy. Today, like many other neighbourhoods in the City, Little Italy most resembles a theme park, similar to those in Disney’s Epcot, a branded commercial replica of what used to be an actual community.

Neither hyper-gentrification nor deepening inequality began with the Bloomberg administration but there is little doubt that these problems accelerated during the city’s ‘comeback’. No less a supporter of the urban creative class than Richard Florida ranks New York City second only to Los Angeles in his New Urban Crisis Index, a measure that combines economic segregation, wage inequality, income inequality and housing unaffordability. Remarkably, much of New York’s major redevelopment under Bloomberg is an extension of the failed bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. This includes positive developments, like the creation of middle-income housing in the borough of Queens that was earmarked for construction of the Olympic Village. On the other hand, the plans for an Olympic stadium on the far west side of Manhattan became the site of the largest private real estate development in the United States when the city approved the Hudson Yards project containing 28 acres of mainly luxury housing and office space, and the creation of a subway line extension linking the area to the rest of the city. It is hard to justify the development since Manhattan has very little affordable housing and the subway system throughout the city is in the worst condition since the end of the Second World War. Nevertheless, the city is providing private developers with significant tax incentives. In total, according to a 2018 account that unpacked the dense thicket of money flows, taxpayers will have poured $5.6 billion into the development and will receive very little, if anything, in return. Public investment includes $2 billion for a subway extension to provide those living and working in some of the most expensive real estate in the world with convenient public transportation. The city also earmarked $500 million in funds for the most expensive park per acre in New York.²⁷ Once again it was Daniel Doctoroff, who led the project from its inception in 2004 until he left the Bloomberg government in 2008 to run the mayor’s business information company.

It is striking to compare this Hudson Yards project with one proposed back in 1967 when addressing inequality, supporting pubic services and keeping the working class in Manhattan mattered to those with the power to make a difference. Chelsea Walk, as the earlier proposal was called, would include primarily middle-income housing, as well as units subsidised to make them affordable for poor and working-class residents, along with schools, a park and other civic amenities. Ironically, the project failed to get off the ground because some opponents felt it did not contain enough low-income housing and others wanted to see more job-producing industrial development. Even though the current Hudson Yards development is much larger, it makes no room for middle- and low-income New Yorkers.²⁸ Moreover, and quite significantly, the Hudson Yards development will collect voluminous amounts of data on how people make use of the space, leading one analyst to refer to the project as the creation of a ‘quantified community’.²⁹ The main partner is New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), a public–private research institute focussing on the relatively new discipline of urban science. The Center has received significant funding from the city, ostensibly in the hope that data gathering and data analysis will benefit future development projects. Critics view the massive surveillance of people, objects and the environment as a prime example of the over-reliance on and fetishisation of data. There is undoubtedly social value in the detailed monitoring of air quality and greenhouse gas emissions. But for private sector participants, it is an opportunity to turn data on social and physical processes at a brand-new luxury development into marketable commodities. In many respects, it foreshadows what Google has in store for the Toronto waterfront.

A related West Side development, the elevated linear park known as the High Line, constructed in 2009 out of an old rail spur and expanded over the years, has attracted widespread praise as a great public space. Having walked the High Line many times, I can easily understand its popularity, particularly for anyone who knew the rough state of the old Meatpacking District it now anchors. However, the park has suffered because of the very zoning changes that were put in place to promote development. Rising above the street, the High Line once felt open and airy, with expansive views of the Hudson River. Now it is more like walking through a tunnel, as high-rise condos and office towers, built to take advantage of the High Line location, block much of what once made the park attractive. It appears that the High Line is serving a similar function as do the communities of artists who move into rundown neighbourhoods and end up advancing gentrification because they provide a cachet attractive to tourists and developers. Eventually, the artists are pushed aside by the very process they once enabled. The High Line offers the cachet to attract not only tourists, but big developers too. Now, their high-rise towers are contributing to the demise of one of the gems of early twenty-first century New York. Contrast this to Paris, where strict zoning has protected the Promenade Plantée, a 3 mile long elevated park created in 1993 from an old viaduct connecting the Bastille to the Bois de Vincennes. I walked both parks in 2018. The High Line was cavernous and downright claustrophobic, with high-rise buildings on both sides; the Promenade Plantée was the same bright garden in the sky it has been for a quarter of a century. Notwithstanding that ‘smart’ is a subjective term, it nevertheless felt obvious to me which city had made the smart choice.

Doctoroff’s Olympic blueprint for New York City contributed significantly to other big development projects, including the construction of Citi Field, home of the New York Mets baseball team in the borough of Queens, on the understanding that it would be used for the 2012 Games. The Olympic bid also led to the redevelopment of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg whose gentrification was subsidised with zoning changes and tax relief justified by the expectation that it would be the location for Olympic aquatic sports. The waterfront park planned to woo the International Olympic Committee was never built. What did go up was luxury housing and, along with it, a 300% increase in neighbourhood property values between 2004 and 2014. It is testimony to the power of Doctoroff that his Olympic dream, which he began to develop in 1994, ultimately had such a profound and, for many New Yorkers, negative impact on the city.

The promise of a genuinely smart city, where cars zip through automated tollbooths and police use instant access to crime and mapping data to anticipate illegal activity, helped to build support for the city’s transformation. So too do the growing number of sewer and air quality sensors, police and traffic cameras, taxi tracking, sound sensors installed on rooftops, sensors that monitor radiation and chemicals, infra-red cameras, as well as garbage cans equipped with Wi-Fi. Moreover, New York is one of nearly 100 cities worldwide that use the ShotSpotter system of microphones located in public places that instantly detect and locate gunshots.

Two of the most important innovations in New York were the development of a concentrated technology research, development and innovation area and the commitment to construct a free, citywide, public Wi-Fi service. Smart cities often include a technology research centre and New York is no exception. It is also no newcomer to this type of activity. In the 1930s, a time when New York was a city of industrial districts, Lower Manhattan featured Radio Row, a centre of electronics businesses that serviced the telecommunications and burgeoning broadcasting companies. AT&T was headquartered in the Radio Row district and Bell Labs was not far away. Ironically, just before Silicon Valley emerged as the world’s information technology capital, Radio Row was torn down to make way for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Two decades later, New York gave birth to a software development district extending from Lower Manhattan up to Madison Square Park. Silicon Alley, as it was called, held out great promise for returning the city to its dominant position in communication and information technology. But the businesses making up the Alley withered in the dotcom bust of 2000, and especially after the city shifted to reconstruction in the wake of the attacks of September 11. Google took a major step towards reviving the industry when it set up an East Coast headquarters in an Art Deco building in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood and agreed to expand by purchasing the Chelsea Market building across the street.

Of equal or greater significance for smart city advocates is the development of Roosevelt Island, the site of Cornell Tech, which was created in 2011, when it won out over competitors in a Bloomberg government contest to develop a high-tech education, research and innovation centre. Occupying 12 acres on the island, it operates a graduate education programme in technology, and carries out research in partnership with New York-based companies, including Citi Ventures, the venture capital arm of the banking conglomerate Citigroup. Citi Ventures plays a significant role in the new tech district with its own 10,900 feet square facility that brings to the island researchers from university, business, technology and design programmes to work on development projects.

In keeping with a focus on development projects tailored to New York’s elite, it was not until late in the third term of the Bloomberg administration that New York began experimenting with public Wi-Fi. In 2012, it started installing routers at payphone kiosks whose use diminished with the spread of cell phones. The programme expanded in 2014 when Bill de Blasio took office as mayor and a contract was awarded to the company CityBridge to set up Wi-Fi kiosks throughout the city. Doctoroff’s Sidewalk Labs entered the picture when it became a major investor in the project, through a subsidiary firm. It was not until 2016 that the system achieved widespread use and it continues to expand. Although Wi-Fi use is free, Sidewalk Labs benefits in several important ways. The company sells advertising, which appears on large, high-definition screens inside each kiosk. It also gathers data on kiosk patrons, which can be used by the company itself, by any other company in the Alphabet organisation, or sold to third parties. CityBridge’s privacy policy claims that personally identifiable data is not sold, but the American Civil Liberties Union has raised concerns about the vague language. Finally, the system serves as a laboratory and a gateway for expanded smart city systems, such as connected street lighting, smart utility meters, traffic-monitoring networks, connected cameras and the installation of 5G wireless services. Although media coverage of problems with the system has focussed mostly on homeless people downloading pornography, and drug dealers using it to complete deals, there are serious questions about surveillance (including through front facing cameras on the Wi-Fi devices), hacking and the sale of publicly generated data. Critics have also complained about the slow rollout of kiosks, citing specifically the city’s grant of an extension on delivery dates despite the lower than expected funding flowing into city coffers.

DON’T GOOGLE THIS

Sidewalk Labs is using its New York experience to expand into Toronto and beyond. This is an important development because it raises significant policy issues that, as the smart city idea continues to spread, should concern every city dweller. Governments are dependent on private sector technologies to make good on smart city promises. That leads municipal and other authorities to develop partnerships with Google, IBM, Cisco, Siemens and other big technology firms supplying Next Internet technologies to make smart cities run and build the command centres to manage them. These public–private partnerships, or P3 arrangements, make it easier to transfer political authority to unelected private entities. ‘Just give us a city and put us in charge’, Eric Schmidt once suggested. Google’s founder, former CEO and the first CEO of Alphabet is beginning to get his wish.

The spectre of private governance over cities did not originate with the smart city concept. In the computer era, the prospect of automated cities that deliver services to customers with the promise of freeing them from municipal bureaucracy is just another manifestation of Bill Gates’s 1996 promise to run the world through ‘friction-free capitalism’.³⁰ However, it is not simply a matter of handing the keys to the city over to the company making the shiniest offer. When New York City was concerned that citizens might balk at big redevelopment schemes that would raze entire neighbourhoods, the city government expanded the power of a minor agency, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, initially charged with handling common harbour issues. Operating at arm’s length from government departments and therefore from public oversight, the Port Authority became the fiefdom of Robert Moses, known to his friends as the Master Builder but dubbed the King of Concrete by those who opposed him. Operating primarily behind closed doors, the organisation enabled Moses to raze entire communities and make the automobile the dominant mode of transportation in New York. Without recourse to oppose such schemes through traditional democratic means, only those citizens who were able to mobilise powerful resistance movements had any chance of success. The most often-cited example is one led by Jane Jacobs that stopped a Moses highway project cutting through Lower Manhattan.

Canada’s version of the Port Authority concept is Waterfront Toronto, a creation of the federal, provincial and municipal governments that serves as the intermediary between the public and the private sectors, in this case, Sidewalk Labs. While it claims representativeness and transparency, the agency’s board of directors contains a ‘who’s who’ of big developers and corporate leaders, along with civic officials. Moreover, following the lead of other such exemplars of the P3 approach, Waterfront Toronto conducts some of its meetings behind closed doors. It is little wonder that with such a ‘public advocate’, as the agency likes to call itself, Google was able to win the right to shape the city’s most valuable real estate before vital issues were settled, including who actually governs the neighbourhood, who owns the mountains of data to be gathered on practically everyone and everything, and what, if any, measures will be deployed to protect privacy, stop hackers and prevent commercial and governmental abuse. Waterfront Toronto was given the authority to select a developer with little public participation and practically no oversight. Moreover, neither the agency nor Sidewalk Labs provided citizens with access to details of their deal. The only public official in a position to actually read the documents was the city council’s representative to Waterfront Toronto. Not even the mayor had access. Like other smart city projects, the plan for Toronto is also very light on details about who is responsible for maintaining the technological apparatus that Sidewalk Labs will install. It is not clear who will oversee and pay for upkeep, updates and prevent abuses of the hardware and software that will give Torontonians a smart waterfront. Moreover, climate change is forecast to have profound effects on the Great Lakes and particularly on cities with highly developed waterfronts. There is little to no preparation in Sidewalk Labs’ plan for the inevitable disruptions to come for Lake Ontario.

What makes this all the more remarkable is that Google, arguably the most substantial information distribution company in the history of the world, cannot see fit to inform the people most affected by its plans about a project that the company hopes will shape the future of the world’s cities. This has raised serious concerns throughout Toronto, including among startups and other companies that might support the project. This is primarily because there is a widespread belief that Google plans to retain control over all data, from design plans to software to data generated by the many uses of the Quayside site. Mark Pavlidis, Chief Technology Officer of the Toronto digital image company Flixel Photos Inc., said he is concerned ‘it wasn’t clear how much access those startups would have to that wealth of data that would be collected through this project’.³¹ Benjamin Bergen, Executive Director of the Council of Canadian Innovators, said that his group of more than 100 Canadian companies remained concerned about Sidewalk’s IP ownership requests. ‘There is still no strategy in place to see wealth generation for the Canadian economy’.³²

None of these criticisms matches the attack levelled by one of Canada’s leading technology executives, James Balsillie, founder and former co-CEO of Research in Motion, the company that created the first successful smartphone, the BlackBerry. Having commercialised Canadian intellectual property in 150 countries, Balsillie has some standing when he asserts that

‘Smart cities’ are the new battlefront for big tech because they serve as the most promising hotbed for additional intangible assets that hold the next trillion dollars to add to their market capitalisations.

At the heart of his criticism is that Waterfront Toronto violated the first rule in negotiations over smart city development: establish control over intellectual property and data. By leaving this key point unresolved, Balsillie insists, control over both defaults to Sidewalk. His conclusion that ‘Waterfront Toronto executives and board are too dumb to realize they are getting played’, might be too strong or might actually underestimate the complicity of Waterfront Toronto, but it is hard to take issue with the view that the Toronto project is a big data victory for Doctoroff, for Sidewalk Labs and for Google. Years of experience also give credence to the tech executive’s concern about all three levels of the Canadian government fawning over a foreign company ‘whose business model is built exclusively on the principle of mass surveillance’. It is ironic, but also quite significant, that one of the most successful private sector technology leaders in Canadian history has recognised better than most what it means to create a private smart city:

A privately controlled ‘smart city’ infrastructure > upends traditional models of citizenship because > you cannot opt out of a city or a society that > practises mass surveillance. Foreign corporate > interests tout new technocratic efficiencies while > shrewdly occluding their unprecedented power grab.

It is rare for business executives to chide even their competitors for promoting ‘a colonizing experiment in surveillance capitalism’, and even rarer for them to criticise the absence of genuine public participation in planning, save for the ‘sham’ of a consultation process run by the company.³³

Also concerned about this apparent Google power grab and frustrated with Sidewalk Labs’ failure to engage the Toronto community on privacy and data control issues, a member of Waterfront Toronto’s Digital Strategy Advisory Panel for the project resigned in protest in October 2018. In her resignation letter, Saadia Muzaffar, the founder of the Toronto group TechGirls Canada, cited the failure of Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs to communicate its plan to the public. She gave special attention to the danger of embedding surveillance technology throughout critical city infrastructure.³⁴ Fearing a collapse in support for the project, Google quickly put together plans for a Civic Data Trust that would strip data of identifying characteristics and make it available for free to those seeking to use it for research or for product development. This did little to resolve serious issues that critics have with the company’s data policy. As Bianca Wylie, an advocate of open data and the co-founder of Tech Reset Canada put it: ‘This is a desperate, panicked and rushed move. It’s not a process for a vendor to be leading and framing’.³⁵ In essence, Google presumes the right to dispose of the data, including location information, gathered on those who use a public space. It believes that allowing the very people from whom it gathers data to use it for free constitutes a concession. Google reserves the right to profit from the data in any of its operations, including cell phones using the company’s apps, by selling it to businesses interested in modelling social behaviour in cities, including advertisers.³⁶ Moreover, the company makes no commitment to store the data in Ontario or even in Canada.

As a result of its action, Sidewalk Labs lost one of its most valuable advisors when former Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian resigned as a consultant. One of the world’s foremost authorities on privacy and surveillance, Cavoukian provided important legitimacy to the Google project. However, concerned that the company was not doing enough to keep data gathered at its smart city location anonymised, she resigned. Specifically, Cavoukian stepped down over an issue that is significant for all smart city development projects, especially those that promise to de-identify data or eliminate the ability to match a specific person with the information gathered about their activities. Although Google promised to de-identify data gathered at Quayside, it could not promise that third parties with access to the data would also comply. The only solution is to de-identify data at the source of its collection and Google refuses to do so. Explaining why, in her words, ‘this is unacceptable’, Cavoukian states:

If personally identifiable data are not de-identified > at source, we will be creating another central > database of personal information (controlled by > whom?), that may be used without data subjects’ consent, that will be exposed to the risks of hacking > and unauthorised access. As we all know, existing > methods of encryption are not infallible and may be > broken, potentially exposing the personal data of > Waterfront Toronto residents! Why take such risks?

Her disappointment was evident in an interview conducted shortly after announcing her departure: ‘I wanted this to become a smart city of privacy – not a smart city of surveillance’. ³⁷ The Auditor General of Ontario, Bonnie Lysyk, appeared to agree with the critics in her December 2018 annual audit, which concluded that Waterfront Toronto gave Google’s Sidewalk Labs preferential treatment and rushed the approval process with insufficient government oversight. In bureaucratic language, the audit concluded that even before Sidewalk revealed any details, including its plans for privacy and data ownership, governments at every level jumped the gun to support the technology giant.³⁸

The smart city movement means more than whether or not parking garages will alert drivers to the number of available spaces. It raises fundamental economic, political, social and environmental issues that present challenges to citizens and governments everywhere. The next chapter takes up different ways in which the world’s cities are responding.

ENDNOTES

1. Anthony M. Townsend, Smart cities: Big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new Utopia, New York, NY: Norton, 2013, p. xiii. 92 The Smart City in a Digital World
2. Dan Patterson, How New York City plans to become a smart city leader, TechRepublic, March 1, 2018, https://www.techrepublic. com/article/how-new-york-city-plans-to-become-a-smart-cityleader/
3. Saeid Malaki, The connected reality of a smart city, Mass Transit, December 17, 2018, https://www.masstransitmag.com/technology/ article/12412867/the-connected-reality-of-a-smart-city
4. Paul Roberts, This is what happens when bitcoin miners take over your town, Politico, March/April, 2018, https://www.politico. com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/bitcoin-mining-energy-pricessmalltown- feature-217230
5. Sapna Maheshwari, The thermometer tells your temperature, then tells firms where to advertise, New York Times, October 23, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/business/media/feveradvertisements- medicine-clorox.html
6. Aaron Hurst, What are the elements of a smart city? Information Age, August 2, 2018, https://www.information-age.com/elementssmart- city-123473906/
7. Teena Maddox, Smart cities: A cheat sheet, TechRepublic, July 16, 2018, https://www.techrepublic.com/article/smart-cities-thesmart- persons-guide/
8. Saurabh Hooda, Five technologies that every smart city needs to cater, BW Smart Cities, July 19, 2018, http://bwsmartcities. businessworld.in/article/Five-Technologies-that-any-Smart-City- Needs-to-Cater/19-07-2018-155290/
9. Nick Ismail, Smart cities could lead to cost savings of $5 trillion: Report suggests, Information Age, December 5, 2017, https://www.information-age.com/smart-cities-lead-cost-savings-5- trillion-123469863/
10. Nick Ismail, Smart city tech could drive millions in economic growth, Information Age, January 24, 2018, https:// www.information-age.com/smart-city-tech-trillions-economicgrowth- 123470508/
11. Sandra Vogel, Intel: “Smart cities give every person back 125 hours a year,” Internet of Business, March 14, 2018, https:// City of Technology 93 internetofbusiness.com/intel-smart-cities-give-every-person-back- 125-hours-a-year/
12. IDC, Investments in technologies enabling smart cities initiatives are forecast to reach $80 billion in 2018, according to a new IDC spending guide, February 20, 2018, https://www.idc.com/ getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS43576718
13. Anthony M. Townsend, Smart cities: Big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new Utopia, New York, NY: Norton, 2013, p. 67.
14. Cited in Eric Jaffe, 4 lessons from Rio’s ‘flawed’ smart cities initiative, Medium, May 11, 2016, https://medium.com/sidewalktalk/ 4-lessons-from-rios-flawed-smart-cities-initiative-31cbf4e54b72
15. Anthony M. Townsend, Smart cities: Big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new Utopia, New York, NY: Norton, 2013, p. 68.
16. Anthony M. Townsend, Smart cities: Big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new Utopia, New York, NY: Norton, 2013, p. 68.
17. Bernard Bartsch, Real-time government, Pictures of the future, Spring 2011, https://www.siemens.com/digitalization/public/pdf/ collective-intelligence-city-dashboard.pdf
18. Yasha Levine, Surveillance Valley: The secret military history of the Internet, New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2018, pp. 1–6.
19. Charles V. Bagli, $2.4 billion deal for Chelsea market enlarges Google’s New York footprint, New York Times, February 7, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/nyregion/google-chelseamarket- new-york.html
20. Emily Badger, Google’s founders wanted to shape a city. Toronto is their chance, New York Times, October 18, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/upshot/taxibots-sensors-andself- driving-shuttles-a-glimpse-at-an-internet-city-in-toronto.html
21. A. J. Dellinger, Sidewalk Labs outlines how it’ll make money from Toronto, Engadget, February 15, 2019, https://www.engadget. com/2019/02/15/alphabet-sidewalk-labs-toronto-tax-revenue/
22. A. J. Dellinger, Sidewalk Labs outlines how it’ll make money from Toronto, Engadget, February 15, 2019, https://www.engadget. com/2019/02/15/alphabet-sidewalk-labs-toronto-tax-revenue/ 94 The Smart City in a Digital World
23. Daniel L. Doctoroff, Greater than ever: New York’s big comeback, New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2017, pp. xi–xii.
24. Zadie Smith, Under the banner of New York, The New York Review of Books, November 4, 2017, https://www.nybooks.com/ daily/2017/11/04/under-the-banner-of-new-york/
25. Jeremiah Moss, Vanishing New York: How a great city lost its soul, New York, NY: William Morrow, p. 6.
26. Zachary Small, How paparazzi dogs and rabbit girl conquered New York City streets, January 6, 2019, https://www.nytimes. com/2019/01/03/arts/design/gillie-marc-schattner-sydney-australiaart- paparazzi-dogs.html
27. Bridget Fisher and Flávia Leite, The cost of New York City’s Hudson Yards redevelopment project, New York, NY: Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, The New School for Social Research, 2018, https://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/images/docs/ research/political_economy/Cost_of_Hudson_Yards_WP_11.5.18.pdf
28. See Mark Lamster, The man in the glass house: Philip Johnson, architect of the modern century, New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2018 and Katy Cornell, 50 years in the making, Manhattan West finally takes shape, City Realty, September 6, 2016, https://www.cityrealty.com/nyc/market-insight/features/the-newskyline/ 50-years-making-manhattan-west-finally-takes-shape/5683
29. Ryan Boysen, Hudson Yards’ smart city initiatives could provide glimpse of NYC’s future, Bisnow, February 22, 2016, https://www.bisnow.com/new-york/news/commercial-real-estate/ hudson-yards-smart-city-initiatives-could-provide-glimpse-of-nycsfuture- 56252
30. Bill Gates, The road ahead, New York, NY: Viking, 1995, p. 182.
31. Josh O’Kane, Quayside project will benefit Canadian companies, says former Alphabet chair Eric Schmidt, The Globe and Mail, September 25, 2018, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/ business/article-quayside-project-will-benefit-canadian-companiessays- former-alphabet/
32. Josh O’Kane, Quayside project will benefit Canadian companies, says former Alphabet chair Eric Schmidt, The Globe City of Technology 95 and Mail, September 25, 2018, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/ business/article-quayside-project-will-benefit-canadian-companiessays- former-alphabet/
33. Jim Balsillie, Sidewalk Toronto has only one beneficiary, and it is not Toronto, The Globe and Mail, October 5, 2018, https://www. theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-sidewalk-toronto-is-not-asmart- city/
34. Josh O’Kane, Tech entrepreneur resigns from Waterfront Toronto advisory board over Sidewalk Labs concerns, The Globe and Mail, October 4, 2018, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/ business/article-saadia-muzaffar-resigns-from-waterfront-torontoadvisory- board-over/
35. Josh O’Kane, Sidewalk Labs to make Toronto Quayside data publicly available via trust, The Globe and Mail, October 15, 2018, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-sidewalk-labs-tomake- data-publicly-available-via-trust/
36. Ava Kofman, Google’s Sidewalk Labs plans to package and sell location data on millions of cellphones, The Intercept, January 28, 2018, https://theintercept.com/2019/01/28/google-alphabetsidewalk- labs-replica-cellphone-data/
37. Josh O’Kane, Privacy expert Ann Cavoukian resigns from Sidewalk Toronto smart-city project: ‘I had no other choice,’ The Globe and Mail, October 20, 2018, https://www.theglobeandmail. com/business/article-privacy-expert-ann-cavoukian-resigns-fromsidewalk- toronto-smart-city/
38. Josh O’Kane, Ontario auditor-general warns Waterfront Toronto to slow down project with Google-affiliate Sidewalk Labs, The Globe and Mail, December 5, 2018, https://www. theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ontario-auditor-generalwarns- waterfront-toronto-to-slow-down-project/