As reported in The Star, urban innovation firm Sidewalk Labs is working on a “digital innovation appendix” intended to blunt criticisms that its lengthy master plan proposal for developing a tech-driven district of the future on Toronto’s waterfront is “frustratingly abstract,” “somewhat unwieldy” and repetitive.

In a presentation Thursday, Sidewalk director of public realm Jesse Shapins told the Digital Strategy Advisory Panel (DSAP), an arm’s length group advising Waterfront Toronto on Sidewalk’s project, that Sidewalk’s appendix — expected next month — will feature five sections.

These include smart cities/digital governance, privacy regulations and Sidewalk’s plans for the responsible use of data, digital infrastructure, digital systems and data use, and ways Sidewalk’s project will “amplify” local tech innovation.

In June, Sidewalk Labs, a sister firm of Google, released a master plan of more than 1,500 pages that laid out its blueprint for Quayside, a 12-acre parcel of land near Parliament and Queens Quay E. that Sidewalk wants to develop into a commercial and housing district.

Among the urban innovations envisioned by Sidewalk for the area would be sensors that collect data aimed at making urban life more efficient, timber frame buildings and automated underground garbage collection. If the innovations prove successful, Sidewalk wants to broaden the project beyond Quayside and into the Port Lands, all part of what Sidewalk calls the IDEA District.

Waterfront Toronto has partnered with Sidewalk on the project but, this week, the DSAP panel of tech, data and privacy experts advising Waterfront Toronto released a “preliminary commentary” calling Sidewalk’s master plan proposal “frustratingly abstract,” adding it spreads discussions of topics across multiple volumes of the proposal and is overly focused on the “what” rather than the “how.”

The panel also took aim at the aspect of the Sidewalk Labs’ proposal calling for the creation of an urban data trust that would govern data collected by sensors in the new district.

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