My wife and I recently attended The Master Plan (https://www.soulpepper.ca/performances/the-master-plan) by Michael Healey who appeared on stage as a narrator and a tree. The play is based on Sideways: The City Google Couldn't Buy by Josh O'Kane and tells the story of Waterfront Toronto's attempt to develop the 12 acre Quayside (https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/our-projects/quayside) area on the Toronto Waterfront. The goal was to create a "smart city" that emphasised sustainable construction, equitable housing, as well as becoming a hub for innovation. In 2017, Waterfront Toronto selected Google's Sidewalk Labs as the sole partner who agreed to put up $50M to develop a master plan. Unfortunately, the project quickly unravelled and was cancelled in 2020. Near the end of the play, a Sidewalk Labs urban planner expresses his frustration with the inability to turn ground-breaking ideas into reality.
The playbill asks:
What does a sustainable and equitable future for Toronto really look like? Did we miss a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring transformative investment to our city? And why does it seem so hard for Toronto to take bold action and get big things done?
Innovation is hard - great ideas often do not survive contact with reality. Innovation also costs money - Toronto city coffers are bare and is struggling to upgrade and even maintain services. On the way back from the play, we were caught in a major subway outage caused by a "signal failure". According to news reports, it was the first of a series of rush hour outages traced to unspecified server outages. Private investors want large returns, and "patient investing" seems long gone as we focus increasingly on the digital world. The play indirectly raises questions about our attraction to novel digital technologies. Digital innovators have learned to make their solutions seductive. Rollouts are faster, often with limited visibility in what is behind the scenes, making it difficult to assess the negative consequences until we are hooked.
in late 2022, Waterfront Toronto signed an agreement with Dream Unlimited Corp. and Great Gulf Group (https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/news/waterfront-toronto-and-quayside-impact-confirm-agreement-to-develop-quayside) that may not be as ambitious as the Sidewalk Labs proposal but hopefully is better able to navigate the challenges of actually getting things done.
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