Infrastructure, smart cities and the knowledge economy: Lessons for policymakers from the Toronto Quayside project

Abstract

Sidewalk Labs' Quayside project in Toronto demonstrates how information technologies are shaping cities' core governance functions. This article focuses on the rules governing decisions to collect, use and disseminate data in data-intensive urban-infrastructure projects. We propose a methodological framework grounded in the multidisciplinary literature on data governance and apply it to the Quayside project, demonstrating how Waterfront Toronto's failure to ask basic questions at the project's outset forced it into retroactive improvisations that allowed Sidewalk Labs to lead and propose data-governance policies primarily in the company's economic interests. We offer recommendations for how cities and other public entities can avoid such mistakes and better analyze knowledge-intensive infrastructure projects.