COVID-19 and the Smart City
By: Rapid Access International, Inc.
November 2020
Toronto’s Quayside Smart City Project Ends in Controversy
In our February 2018 article for MRI’s Platinum Society, we wrote about Alphabet subsidiary, SidewalkLabs, and its project aimed at transforming the Quayside neighborhood in Toronto into a sort of smart
city live experiment. A that time, Sidewalk had already pledged to spend $50 million on the first phaseof planning.1
Sidewalk had won the right to plan the 12-acre neighborhood, in partnership with Waterfront Toronto,“from the internet up”, “filled with new technologies such as heated sidewalks, robotic garbage systems,and, crucially, sensors that would collect data about how people move about cities and inspire evenmore innovations.”2
In May of this year, Sidewalk announced the cancellation of the project. The company blamed theCOVID-19 pandemic, citing its devastation of the global economy and its effects on the Toronto realestate market.3
But, the Quayside has been fraught with delays and controversy. Privacy concerns were at the center ofthe controversy. Tech-billionaire Jim Balsillie has said that Sidewalk’s withdrawal was a “beautifulvindication” for opponents who called out governments for partnering with a company whose parent isknown for hoarding intellectual property and collecting user data.4
While COVID-19 may have played a role in this about face for Sidewalk and Waterfront Toronto, thefailure of the project really highlights the importance of public-private trust in the development of smart
cities.
COVID-19 Accelerates Smart City Development
Indeed, COVID-19 in many cases has served to help accelerate smart city development. In the face ofworldwide economic recession budgets have been slashed in the public and private sectors. Citybudgets for tech innovation projects are under greater scrutiny, for sure. But, many governments areleaning even harder in to their commitment to smart city technologies.
In an October article, “How COVID accelerated smart city development”, GCN outlined some of thesecommitments:51Woyke, Elizabeth. A smarter smart city. MIT Technology Review. February 21, 2018. Available at:https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610249/a-smarter-smart-city/ Accessed on November 30, 2020.
2O'Kane, Josh. Google affiliate Sidewalk Labs abandons Toronto smart-city project. The Globe And
Mail. May 7, 2020. Available at: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/technology/article-googleaffiliate-sidewalk-labs-abandons-toronto-smart-city-project/. Accessed on November 30, 2020.
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
5
Sooryaa Muruga Thambiran, Siva. How COVID accelerated smart city development. GCN. October
15, 2020. Available at: https://gcn.com/articles/2020/10/15/smart-cities-post-covid.aspx. Accessed onNovember 30, 2020.

•In June, the government of Singapore announced that it would escalate its investment indigitizing businesses by 30%. In a statement, officials identified the development of new techtools to respond to COVID-19 and the use of data analytics, artificial intelligence and sensors tomodernize government initiatives as areas of key focus.

•In the United Arab Emirates, the government made sure that guidelines regarding social
distancing and lockdown rules were obeyed by implementing an AI-based system that helped
local police wearing “smart helmets equipped with a thermal camera to detect those infectedwith COVID-19 from a safe distance,” officials said in a statement. At the same time, the system
also helped identify people who were on the roads without the necessary authorization byreading their vehicle plate numbers.

•As part of the Indian government-funded Smart Cities Mission, 45 cities have operational
integrated command and control centers. These ICCCs serve as quasi-war rooms to makeemergency decisions, manage contact tracing activities and monitor the state of lockdown
efficiency.

•In China, building plans for Net City include more sustainability measures such as green roofgardens, less infrastructure support for cars and more use of AI in decision-making. At the sametime, there has been more emphasis on resilience planning. [E]mergency response systems arebeing optimized to integrate features that pinpoint locations of callers using mobile phones anduse dashboards and data visualization tools to manage the crisis.

Klaus R. Kunzmann, a professor emeritus and the former head of the Institute of Spatial Planning at theTechnical University of Dortmund, Germany, has offered some insight on the apparent COVID-19 trendof the smart city materializing faster than expected.
In a recent article for disP—The Planning Review6, Kunzmann argues that the conditions created by thepandemic will make it much easier for local governments to pursue smart city solutions in areas such as
traffic control, crime prediction, and data sensors.7:
Kunzmann says the pandemic has increased peoples’ exposure to top-down government
guidance—from social distancing requirements to official virologists interpreting data. This
exposure, he says, will subtly create more openness to suggestions and plans proposed by city
leaders. Combined with the imperative to quickly rebuild devastated local economies, Kunzmannargues that the door will open widely to the kinds of efficiency-focused solutions offered bycompanies such as IBM and Siemens. “Individual convenience will outweigh privacy concerns,”
he says.8

6Kunzmann, Klaus R. Smart Cities After Covid-19: Ten Narratives. disP - The Planning Review.
Volume 56, 2020 - Issue 2. July 17, 2020. Available at:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02513625.2020.1794120. Accessed on November 30,2020.
7Berg, Nate. COVID-19 has opened the floodgates for smart cities—whether we like it or not. FastCompany. July 23, 2020. Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/90530580/covid-19-has-openedthe-floodgates-for-smart-cities-whether-we-like-it-or-not. Accessed on November 30, 2020.
8Ibid.

In the end, the example of Sidewalk’s failed project in Toronto is a hopeful case that illustrates how theacceleration of smart city development, hastened further by COVID-19, can still be placed in check
where the controversies of privacy and the public-private trust cannot find the right balance.