-'Smart cities', urban development projects that design computational systems and sensory technology to monitor activity and regulate energy consumption and resource distribution, are a frontier for the prospective deployment of ICTs for sustainability. Often reduced to technological problems of optimization, these projects have implications far beyond narrow environmental and consumptive frames of sustainability. Studying them requires frameworks that support us in examining technological and environmental sustainability dimensions jointly with social justice perspectives. This paper uses Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) to examine the design of Sidewalk Toronto, an ongoing smart city development. We explore how the professed values guiding the project are contentiously enacted, and we argue that key stakeholders and beneficiaries in the planning process significantly constrain the emancipatory and transformative potential of the project by marginalizing the role of residents in determining project purposes. This analysis contributes an example that illustrates the relevance of critical systems thinking in ICT4S and offers CSH as a conceptual frame that supports critical reflection on the tensions between the visions and realities of 'sustainable' ways of organizing human life.
‘A neighbourhood from the internet up’ [
Controversy surrounds the proposed development of the Sidewalk Labs ‘smart city’ project in Toronto. In the world’s most diverse city, the world’s most powerful computing business (Google’s Alphabet) has partnered with the municipal government, promising to build the sustainable city of the future. This project is imagined as a prototype, a technologydriven flagship, and a vehicle for legitimizing an ICT company’s bid to shape the future of cities worldwide.
The term ‘smart city’ is full of promises: as human activity condenses into urban environments, urban life has become the site for sustainable design. Since ICT have become a foundation of dominating cultures and economies, they are seen as a choice strategy to make cities sustainable. The drivers of this kind of sustainable development are largescale collection and analysis of observational and statistical data, and cybernetic feedback through embedded devices and human-facing software. The term ‘smart city’ subsumes these technologies, the logic that relates them to goals of sustainability, and the aesthetic of a sustainable city.
This paper examines how the Sidewalk Toronto project’s purposes are influenced by the goals of it’s most powerful stakeholders, Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs. This paper will argue that sustainability, and thus smart city projects, should be considered more holistically than is possible through the narrow lenses of technological optimization and environmental sustainability. Failure to consider systems critically can leave out considerations with important impacts for how sustainability is pursued, and how power and decision-making might influence that pursuit.
The paper’s argument continues the trajectories set by Mann
et al. [
Smart city research in the ICT4S community has focused on
the design of specific products to affect consumption patterns
[
As the concept of the smart city becomes more popular
in the ICT4S community, care must be taken to avoid
replicating the weaknesses in considering technological systems
as separable from the much larger and complex systems of
social organization and reproduction within which they are
embedded. For example, Borjesson et al. argue that a narrow
technological/environmental frame for smart cities neglect the
importance of social-systemic patterns of consumption and
activity, in favour of a simplistic understanding of humans
as atomized beings who make decisions based on economic
and rational calculations [
To consider smart cities as abstract systems that can be
algorithmically optimized for sustainable energy and resource
use fails to do justice both to present and future residents and
to the ideal of sustainability. As Mann et al. argue, approaches
to sustainability in the ICT4S community must make a strident
effort to move beyond merely acknowledging the importance
of sustainability, or simply proposing product-based
interventions or efficiency finding manoeuvres [
The case we analyze is the Sidewalk Toronto smart
city project being planned in the 12-acre Quayside area
of Toronto’s waterfront: a joint venture between Waterfront
Toronto (WT) and Sidewalk Labs (SL), an urban development
and technology firm and Alphabet (Google’s parent company)
subsidiary. Sidewalk Toronto is to be a pilot for future local
development, and a test-bed for smart city development globally.
In 2017, WT issued a request for proposals that situated smart
cities as a technological approach to sustainability, eliciting
a partnering firm that could use ICTs to create a “climate
positive approach [to urban design] that will lead the world in
city building practises” [
Excepting the foregrounding of sustainability concerns, the
principles extolled in WT’s RFP and Sidewalk’s Vision are
congruent with the “Smart City Principles” explored by
Cosgrove et al., placing the focus of human work on service
provision driven by optimization, grounded in an
“information marketplace” [
Sidewalk Toronto is envisioned in terms of systems: a
“nextgeneration transit system”, a “district wide energy system”,
an “ecosystem” that supports economic agents, as well as
a collection of information systems that support relations
between residents, such as the “public realm management
system” [
As a systems design project, Sidewalk Toronto intends to construct a system of life from the ground up, so that it might be replicated universally.
Easterbrook’s call for the integration of systems thinking contexts into computational research stems from three perceived weaknesses in the dominating ‘computational’ way of thinking. First, he argues that the domain ontology of computational thinking is problematically biased by its dependence on computational terms, techniques, metaphors, and heuristics for describing the world [5, p.239-240]. Computational thinking is most powerful when complexity can be reduced to deterministic sets of variables and interactions, managed hierarchically by a system and “solved” by reckoning. As Easterbrook notes, though subfields in computer science have developed techniques to capture what was overlooked, they are for the most part expansions of computational thinking.
To enrich the descriptive capacities of computational thinkers, Easterbrook proposes the use of concepts from the area of System Dynamics, which has a close connection of ecological thinking and uses concepts of feedback, stocks, and flows.
Second, Easterbrook argues that computational thinking has a limited capacity to understand how systemic change occurs. Either change is explained deterministically (in terms of having access to technologies or information previously CSH is heuristic, admitting that no standpoint or theory can absent), or as the result of responsible individuals, who “have ever sufficiently justify its own assumptions [17, p.287]. Any agency over their social and environmental impacts, ... [and analysis, including our own, must take its own partial standonly need] better tools to help them become more sustainable” point, and can neither comprehensively describe a situation, [5, p.240]. In thinking about smart cities, we try to avoid nor subsume all possible perspectives of it. At best, CSH can technological solutionism. seek to reveal and problematize the normative assumptions
Third, Easterbrook criticizes computational thinking as ill- informing a plan, making clear the contingent nature of these equipped to handle complexity critically, and as a result strug- boundaries and making them the subject of deliberation. CSH gles to consider “questions about how relationships of power is intended to enable citizens or participants in a decision are created and maintained in society, and how the tools that making process to engage in critique of expert knowledge, and mediate social interactions affect these relationships. . . [and] to discover sources of deception or implicit strategic action who has the power to create or prevent change” [5, p.241]. [17, p.22].
These questions are essential to considering how our societies CSH aims to avoid coercion in planning by, inasmuch as can be reorganized to be holistically sustainable. Easterbrook possible, eroding the boundaries between those affected by here covers the key presuppositions that underpin a critical a system and those involved in the decision making process systems approach: (1) that deciding on an account of a system [17, p.248]. At stake is how those involved, as participants and necessarily means partitioning it from the larger context in observers, can rationally justify and legitimate the boundaries which it is embedded, (2) that “any interesting system” will and concepts that structure systems design. Domain or techbe complex enough such that no single definitive model or nical experts may be better able to make claims or have more counter-factual claim can be non-probabilistically true (so power to make decisions, but they cannot justify or legitimate disagreement is inevitable), and (3) that the standpoint of the these claims without recourse to assumptions about the way observers are undeniably mediated by the ways we think, act the world is structured and how a system ought to be designed and learn about a situation [5, p.242]. to accomplish the purposes for which it is created. Only the affected can legitimate the implications of any technology
III. CRITICAL SYSTEMS HEURISTICS design as far as they affect their own lived experience. On As Ulrich compellingly argues, it is not enough to try and be this matter, they are the legitimate experts. holistic. Systems thinkers must also deal critically with their Those involved in decision making construct the boundary own inevitable selectivity and lack of comprehensiveness, by judgments that constitute an intelligible social systems dereflecting on their own understandings as equally partial. sign. This raises questions about motivation, control, and the
As the major framework in critical systems thinking[
CSH is critical. In contrast with structural accounts of process. As such, its raises questions rather than answers them. change, critical systems thinking means not only acknowledg- Our use of CSH to critically examine the boundary judgments ing the systemic interconnections of behavioural patterns (such in Sidewalk Toronto is no exception. For this analysis, we as the use of fossil fuels with the design of cities), but to see used official SL and WT documentation, public engagement that these patterns are not homeostatic but actively maintained reports, and press articles. We have also participated in several and could, therefore, be changed. planning sessions, and have visited the affected spaces.
The project’s stated purpose is to create “a vibrant,
climatepositive and prosperous community. . . as a national and global
model to encourage market transformation towards
climatepositive city building” [
Declared beneficiaries include prospective residents in
Toronto, including “people of all income levels and at all
stages of life” who will benefit from a “future proof” life in
an inclusive “complete community”. This includes “employers
and job creators” who benefit from access to a dense cluster of
skilled labour and competing firms, as well as the businesses
who sustaining and sustained by the community. Tourists
and residents of the greater Toronto area will benefit from
the addition of significant cultural and recreational amenities
to the waterfront[
To assure that the project has succeeded in its purpose to
create an environmentally and socially sustainable community
in a market friendly urban area, measures of improvement
(MoIs) are developed. These provide an important basis to
examine how parties involved in decision making understand
the system’s purposes and beneficiaries. WT’s RFP sets out
sustainability-related MoIs in their Resilience and Innovation
Framework and asks potential partners to provide key
performance indicators to measure and evaluate success [
Before the release of the major planning document, the
Draft Agreement (PDA)[
The planning process is centered on public engagement and
what the /emphVision calls“holistic planning”. The technical
expertise of Sidewalk Members and the facilitation skills of
WT and contracted firms continuously collect feedback and
responses from citizens. Sidewalk Toronto thus involves an
array of experts and expertise in planning, implementation
and operational phases. As the MIDP is drafted, pieces of
the plan are presented for public comment and engagement
on specific ideas. In line with Borjensson et al.’s[
In principle, the opportunities for residents and members
of publics to learn about and contribute to planning supports
the broad participation of a wide range of experts. Hundreds
of people attend the frequent public meetings and open
events, staffed by dozens of volunteers. Public Roundtables
feature general and breakout sessions which are recorded
and streamable[
While categories of Motivation, Control and Knowledge refer to those involved, Legitimacy addresses those affected. The legitimate inclusion of multiple perspectives requires the emancipation of the affected, the ability to speak their concerns freely, and the obligation of the involved to consider them in good faith. This is to be made possible through commitments to public engagement in the planning process. For example, participants at Roundtables represent themselves; they give their own opinions and thoughts, speaking to specific questions in structured and facilitated venues. The resulting material is collected, analyzed and responded to in iterated representations of the emerging plan. However, public engagement processes like this are clearly designed to establish the democratic legitimacy of the project by ensuring that those affected are represented. To what degree does this selfselected participation in highly structured exercises bring forth an honest witness to testify to the experience of those affected by the outcomes of this process? In order to examine to what degree those affected are free to emancipate themselves from the project’s worldview, and to offer their own perspectives, we turn to the conceptual framework of boundary critique and explore how CSH supports it.
Having used CSH to represent the stated ‘is’ situation, we discuss selected themes that illustrate how CSH helps us to: (1) elicit and make visible the reference system of assumptions that underpin the project; (2) contrast it with complementary perspectives on how things are as well as how things should be; (3) evaluate how competing interpretations are politically marginalized through the design of the engagement process; (4) identify and critique central boundary judgments; and (5) effectively structure our own critique so that its normative implications become transparent.
grounding for critique of the normative assumptions at play in the planning process. The first step is the reconstruction of the stated boundaries of the system within the CSH framework. We have done this above through reference to, and analysis of, official documentation and presentations. Placing these statements of value and purpose into the relations of CSH allows us to sketch out themes and boundaries based on our own standpoints, such that we can explore how boundaries are constructed, and potentially in disagreement with their motivating principles.
CSH considers two kinds of boundary judgments. The first
kind refers to boundaries are established more or less explicitly
in the process of partitioning a system, or in deciding what
should be considered a component or relation of the system
and what is considered as environmental. The second kind
refers to the boundary judgments supporting the first. Any
decision about what and how to consider a system is a claim that
admits of argumentation and justification. These supporting
statements are also claims that admit of justification, going on
until justification stops with a rhetorical appeal to something
like expertise or to a view of reality. The point at which a
boundary admits of varying interpretation from complimentary
perspectives, or when the reason to accept it is left as an open
question, constitutes a “justification break-off”[
In the case of Sidewalk Toronto, justification break-offs occur in the way that control over the system is to be exercised. Questions about the first kind of boundary judgment can be asked about not only the planning process but the design of the system itself: who controls different aspects of the systemwill it be existing government authorities? Citizens? Sidewalk? Markets? Answering these questions in any manner prompts a second order boundary question: why should the smart city be administered in this way?
on the boundaries set out in an official storyline need not occur in a vacuum. We draw from the mainstream criticisms of Sidewalk in the press that speak to specific parts of the official story, and that often clearly reference the boundary judgments stabilized within the CSH framework. These complimentary perspectives offer avenues for critical reflection, suggest alternative ways of interpreting the situation, and provide support and direction for suspicions that arise from a perception of marginalization or coercion within the official boundaries.
Take for example the commitment to ‘complete
communities’. Its key pillar is a mixed-income distribution in the
Quayside, to be assured and measured through the provision
of “affordable housing”. The operationalization of
affordability suggests how complete, mixed-income communities in
Quayside are to be understood. At first glance, Sidewalk
Lab’s commitment to affordable housing seems to exceed the
legal minimum set by municipal policy. Following a Sidewalk
Fellows report, as well as criticism by community organization
ACORN, they expanded the plan to include 40% affordable
housing[
However, this commitment does not address the affordable
housing crisis in Toronto, it merely sets the floor based on the
existing need[
3) Evaluate discourse and marginalization: CSH can also allow reflection on where and how concerns about boundary judgments are marginalized. The specific boundaries drawn through the design, architecture, management, and governance of ICTs remain underdeveloped, but as CSH can focus equally well on process as on product, some of these boundaries are already tangible. The case of the Civic Data Trust (CDT) demonstrates how boundaries are drawn based on the worldview of the Involved, which focuses on innovation and resource allocation through markets, frustrating the honest consideration of smart city residents as beneficiaries.
Much criticism of Sidewalk Toronto has focused on the
tensions between developing smart cities to serve local publics
versus the need to build them with a profit-oriented “business
model” that allows SL to accrue value through the operation of
the smart city. In part, discussion has focused on how the key
resource of data generated in Quayside should be considered
as a social product or public good, how the data is treated and
made accessible, and to whom it belongs [
To address these concerns, decisionmakers announced a
plan to create a “Civic Data Trust” (CDT), a “third party public
organization” to govern a repository of Quayside Data [
The proposal of the CDT was met with criticism. Former
Privacy Commissioner for Ontario and global privacy expert
Ann Cavoukian resigned from the aforementioned expert
panel, citing unacceptable weaknesses in the fact that it did not
require anonymization at the point of collection and merely
encouraged services collecting data to adhere to strong
privacy principles [
Decisions of ownership and control over technological
infrastructure in the smart city draw boundaries with enormous
social and economic impacts within these systems. The CDT
would control the infrastructure of data storage and use,
produced by the sensors that collect that data and the technical
standards that structure access. The former head of Blackberry
maker RIM summarized the problem of private ownership
of the low level data infrastructure: because it enshrines
Sidewalk’s ownership of IP based on the collection of public
data, it inevitably “creates a systemic market advantage from
which companies can inexorably expand” [
SL has drawn their boundaries of control of resources very
broadly. Tenuous agreements set out in the PDA protect the
IP interests of Alphabet and Sidewalk, but do not provide
much detail on how contracts for services might be decided
in the future. Alphabet already controls applicable services
such as Coord (for managing transit and road-based assets)
and has proposed numerous application level products for
pilot at Quayside [
Control over the low-level technical and physical infrastructure by a single dominating firm allows a standards-level monopoly to shape the environment and market within which technology development and service innovation occurs. What role will those affected, the citizens and residents of Smart Cities, play in the decision making and governance of these new ways of life? Civic engagement and community building are alluded to in Sidewalk Toronto materials; Sidewalk says that its smart city will make volunteering easier, or that its data-layers will be a great resource for civic tech and social entrepreneurialism. However, these civic activities are situated within the boundaries of information systems controlled by Sidewalk. Examples include ‘Intersection’, a product that provides internet access and “enables a vast array of neighbourhood experiences, including amenity reservation and digital feedback channels”[1, p.19] and a “Neighbourhood Assistant Tool” that could “enable Quayside residents to form new neighbourhood groups, crowd-source community needs, and access a peer-to-peer marketplace. . . another portal through which residents communicate feedback to officials, addressing the need for digital tools that gauge community well-being” [1, p.33].
By juxtaposing official and critical discourses of the project,
CSH allows us to see how opposing views are addressed,
reconciled, and marginalized by the Involved. Specifically,
we have tried to show how the Vision for Sidewalk Toronto
posits the company’s role as a facilitator of civic engagement
and democratic decision making, but not as the site or object
of governance. Public engagement exercises seem to address
governance issues, but in reality they obscure them. A CDT
is just an act of trust if it does not have a governance
structure that allows the civic body that it describes to exercise
control over its data in decision making. While the proposed
information systems seem to encourage civic engagement,
their design also specifies what counts as valid engagement,
suggesting that these concessions are a form of what Cardullo
and Kitchin (via Arnstein) call “placation”, where citizens are
given the chance to change or challenge plans, but where their
involvement is subordinated to the larger objectives of of those
Involved[
4) Identify boundary judgments: The examples of
affordable housing and the CDT illustrate some of the central
motivations and boundary judgments that appear to be guiding
the planning process. Tensions between resource collection
and control are tied to boundary judgments around what
constitutes the environment of smart city developments. For
entities like WT and SL, the market is the ultimate
environmental constraint. This is apparent, on one hand, by the
way WT positions itself as a partner that seeks to leverage
relationships with the private sector [
CSH has allowed us to stabilize an ‘official’ story for the smart city planning process, and to leverage some existing, but marginalized, criticisms of that process to provide greater nuance to our perception of boundary judgments. We use the official narrative as a source of evidence for the way that these boundaries are constructed and maintained, and in some cases, how they serve to brush aside criticisms by giving the sense that they have been addressed, while still maintaining the same strategic boundaries.
5) Structure critique: Table IV-B5 briefly summarizes key standpoints, concepts, and questions that arose during our analysis of official and critical perspectives. In the spirit of CSH, it should be seen as heuristic device rather than a result: not the outcome of CSH’s application, but a mid-point that both helps to settle our reflections and points to more questions and avenues for critique. More iterations and versions of such tables can be produced individually or cooperatively. The table here represents a period of research and analysis, it serves as a summary of our thoughts at the time, as a provocation to further reflection and analysis within the categories of CSH.
As our tabular application of CSH (IV-B5) demonstrates, the authors’ standpoint and the requirements of the format have acted to select and constrain the perspective of this partial engagement with the Sidewalk Toronto planning process. Our account here is not comprehensively holistic in terms of description. The reproduction of urban life relies on global and local systems well beyond our scope here. As a document of process, the CSH table passes over many considerations and commitments to matters of environmental, social, economic, and individual justice.
In application, CST and CSH research could anticipate
these limitations and address them with a systematic
expansion of methods. We have collected mainstream press and
official documentation, and attended events when possible.
It would be desirable to sweep in a more diverse array of
collaborators, participants, and publics into the creation of
CSH documentation[
Sustainability indicators[
Environmental sustainability as a service affordable housing for the middle class CDT governance left outside boundaries, proposed information systems enclose civic engagement in decision making.
Role of public engagement gives WT, SL the initiative in communication and final calls.
Criticism by Ann Cavoukian around IP points to
discretionary power of SL around publicly
produced data[
Public engagements seen not as a source of
expertise, but as SL leveraging public engagements
as a source of knowledge for their own experts,
to ‘inform’ MIDP [
Democracy as Guarantor Atomization and aggregation poses public as individuals to provide affective feedback and to components rather than the system. Focus on values provides rhetorical initiative to WT and SL.
No apparent inclusion or reference beyond land acknowledgement Preconfigured engagement, based on identified areas, and offering no potential for emancipation Appealing to the ‘reality’ of neoliberal dominance, the balance of the 3Ps tilting to profit, which is always the most bottom line. or other action research, applying CSH could help maintain space for critical reflection and diversity of perspective. B. Measured Management
“Sidewalk expects Quayside to become the most measurable community in the world” [1, pg.22]. Ambitions to environmental sustainability in Sidewalk Toronto rest on the belief that through measurement and systematization of urban activities such as energy use and transit, control and coordination can be improved to lessen waste and environmental impact. Smart City technology enables pursuit of this goal through sensory and management systems that might track and analyze trends, more efficiently consuming resources. In the case of a smart city like Sidewalk, these resources might include stocks for heating, waste and recycling capacity, and for maintaining the physical spaces sought after for conducting economic and social activity, including dwelling, commercial, and public spaces like parks. If discrete or aggregated measurements can be sought, monitored, and managed, that data stands in as a resource. As a representational layer on top of the city’s (not to mention its associates) material activities, smart city systems want to manage that data. Value creation promised through increased convenience, efficiency, sustainability, etc., are delivered only if the presumed requisite data is available, and on who has access to it. Even after construction, capital resources and labour are required needed to maintain these infrastructures and to put their results to use.
Ambitions in the Vision extend beyond environmental sustainability, to “promoting activity, healthy eating, relaxation, and connection to the environment. . . [through] capturing a variety of data and facilitating residents’ and others’ uses of that data through existing and new applications”, as well as to the business of neighbourhood politics [1, pg.171]. From this perspective, ecological sustainability intersects with other aspects of sustainability as resource consumption and use is related with activities, lifestyles, exchanges (etc.), and with supporting infrastructures, computational and otherwise. However, mere measurement is insufficient for management: “to understand what makes the urban environment work well, and detect when it is under-performing, it is necessary to perform longitudinal analysis, and be able to distinguish normal states from anomalous ones” [1, pg.72].
Achieving normal, “livable” space requires evaluation, and
a value-based framework that is implied, but, we think,
unspecific. Sidewalk’s commitment to Quayside suggests an
ongoing endeavour, actively managed at different time scales
with successive interventions by, for example, “facility
managers” [1, pg.74]. Commercially, efficiency and convenience
can perform as MoIs– a decrease in travel time or noise
complaints, increases in overall air quality, successful user
transactions, etc. Proposed innovation platforms or information
marketplaces articulate the resident/citizens of a smart city
primarily as the beneficiaries of services, or consumers of
resources. Just who delivers these services and manages the
resources? Would municipal or public actors be replaced by a
market where returns were sought through treating residents
and citizens as a resource or product [
‘Cities have the capability of providing something
for everybody, only because, and only when, they
are created by everybody.’ [
The ongoing SL project in Toronto is a major smart city
development, the deployment of technologically advanced urban
infrastructures built from scratch to achieve their designers’
ambitious goals. Sustainability is a key value used to motivate
the project. As this paper argued, however, sustainability
in smart city projects must be considered more holistically
than is possible through the narrow lenses of technological
optimization and ecological sustainability[
Basing our analysis on CST, we have showed how the project’s purpose is framed by the rationalities and goals of its most powerful stakeholders. We used CSH for a boundary critique that traces the concerns of the numerous voices, and to examine and critically reflect on how values and interests influence and constrain the project’s purposes and vision. This situates CSH, and CST more broadly, as a powerful tool for the holistic consideration of sustainability in smart city projects and large scale transitions to sustainable societies.
This is not a call to disregard the technical expertise offered by Sidewalk or any other firm. If we are to truly transform our societies to be sustainable and prosperous, we must critically reflect on the role and purpose of technologies in our everyday lives. What becomes clear through critical analysis is that technical decisions in the smart city are, as much as ever, political decisions about relations between people, organizations, and power. Governance of smart cities is tied to design and architecture choices, both in regards to the sustainability of any underlying infrastructure of smart cities, but also to the intersection of this new datafied layer and everyday life, through the systems and interfaces constructed to create and manage that resource.
A key challenge for the ICT4s community is to ensure that these types of boundaries do not go unnoticed in smart city research. This will mean continuing to critically reflect on the role of technological choices in instantiating social and political relationships and assessing their potential as environmentally sustainable technologies. Critical systems thinking can assist in just that type of work. As a heuristic tool, CSH does not need to supplant or dominate research in order to be effective. Beyond this evaluative role, as framework for interventionary practise or self-reflection in technology design it can help practitioners and technologists to more effectively probe the normative implications of their work.
This research was partially supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council through RGPIN-201606640, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Onatrio Research Fund, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council through the Canadian Graduate Scholarship. Special thanks to Dawn Walker.