After more than two years of hand wringing, public outcry and protest, Sidewalk Labs’ lofty vision for a futuristic smart city on Toronto’s waterfront was brought down to earth Thursday, when the sister firm of American tech giant Google signed off on a radically reduced footprint, abandoned several preconditions and made concessions on data governance and technology sharing.And this was due, in no small part, to one man who arm-wrestled the technology behemoth and won.Stephen Diamond, who was appointed chair of Waterfront Toronto in March — 18 months after Sidewalk Labs won the bid to plan a parcel of land called Quayside, said when he started the company’s attitude was that Toronto needed them to kick-start development on the waterfront. Now, the feeling is more that they need Toronto.“The city of Toronto could get by without Sidewalk Labs, to be quite frank,” Diamond said in an interview after Thursday’s board meeting to approve the new framework. “I believe that they are fortunate to be able to develop here — if we can make it all work.”Diamond said this shift in thinking came about amid intense public scrutiny and the realization that Sidewalk Labs didn’t have a track record of successful projects.“I think it’s important for Sidewalk, which is a new company, to be able to find a project to move forward with,” he said. “Having the opportunity to develop an innovative project in the city of Toronto, one of the best cities in the world ... they had to work with us and not be adversarial if they were going to be successful.“I do give them credit, because I think it was hard for them to move,” he said.The details of the new framework, revealed by the Star on Wednesday, include restricting development to the 12-acre Quayside plot, acknowledging that an outside developer will have to be chosen to build the infrastructure, abandoning a transit line as a preconditio ...
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