Uploaded on 2019-03-07 by Ambaye Kidane

Idea for a Citizen Design Science Project: Comment on an existing Citizen Design Science project in urban design and planning from your area or country For this exercise, I would focus on the Quayside project – an ambitious plan to build a smart city on the water front in downtown Toronto, Canada. The project, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., includes the building of a digital infrastructure with a centralized identity management system through which residents would access public services. It also includes driverless cars, heated streets, censor-enabled waste production and monitoring traffic congestion. The ultimate plan is to use lessons gained in scaling up similar projects in other cities or countries. The project has faced strong opposition from critics concerned about privacy issues, the use of public data to profit private corporations and the lack of public input in the current plan. I suggest the following steps to move forward with the plan while addressing the views, concerns and perspectives of the public and other stakeholders. • Hold a series of open house discussions; • Online surveys and consultations to identify key concerns and ways of addressing them (crowdsourcing); and • Work with critics to address their concerns.