Sidewalk Labs’ chief executive officer defended the company’s grandiose plan to redevelop a swath of the city’s eastern waterfront into a tech-driven neighbourhood, in a wide ranging and often critical online forum Friday.

Dan Doctoroff fielded a gamut of concerns and spent most of the one-hour session trying to dispel public mistrust for Sidewalk Labs, a sister firm of Google, and its master plan for a 190-acre district which includes the Quayside site near Queens Quay E. and Parliament St., and a piece of the Port Lands called Villiers West.

“We do believe data has a big role to play (alongside great urban design) in improving quality of life,” Doctoroff wrote Friday in the “Ask me anything” (AMA) session on Reddit. “But we also know that this project can’t succeed unless people can trust the approach to protecting data privacy.”

The online session is part of the urban innovation firm’s ongoing bid to sell its 1,500-page “Toronto Tomorrow” draft master plan for the $3.9 billion residential, commercial and office project on the eastern waterfront. The company has said it will provide up to $1.3 billion in funding.

An exchange with one participant during the online meeting underscored the public uncertainty around the scope of the project and lingering suspicion that Sidewalk Labs is motivated by “nefarious, purely self-serving reasons.”

“We are worried that our privacy and data will be compromised,” the participant stated. “We are worried that if your company does ultimately lie to us, abuse our trust, or ruin a very tangible and permanent part of our city, that we will not see any justice for the wrongdoings.”

Since the master plan was unveiled critics have raised concerns including that Sidewalk Labs plans to expand beyond Quayside, the original site in question, into other city-owned areas of the waterfront, as well as its proposals for transit financing, data use and revenue-sharing with governments from technology developed through the site.

Doctoroff said Sidewalk Labs’ ambition to drive economic development, job creation, eco-friendly development and housing affordability, will not go unchecked.

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“We’re also a for-profit company that wants to earn a reasonable return, and we couldn’t reasonably ask anyone to trust us blindly,” Doctoroff stated. “Ultimately, our proposal will be subject to robust public consultation. Any deal must be scrutinized, negotiated, and (we hope) approved by Waterfront Toronto and the three levels of government it represents.”

In his bid to dispel public wariness of the proposal, Doctoroff stated that “while our proposal is innovative, and would leverage certain new ideas, much of our plan relies on integrating design insights and technical solutions already successful elsewhere.”

Part of winning public trust will involve Sidewalk Labs subjecting itself to independent oversight of how data is collected and used, Doctoroff said.

“Canadian government has successfully protected the public interest while executing on other large Toronto projects before, and everything we’ve seen to date suggests that they’re more than up to the task,” he said.

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Friday’s informal online question-and-answer session aimed at explaining aspects of the proposal is not part of the Waterfront Toronto’s official public consultation process, which allows the public to weigh in and provide feedback, including via an online survey open for input until July 31.

Last month, hundreds flocked to Sidewalk Toronto’s open house, which offered visitors a glimpse into what the neighbourhood could look like once completed. It highlighted key concepts from the “Toronto Tomorrow” report such as better public transit and walkability in the high-tech community, and models of highrise structures built from mass timber, which is more environmentally sustainable than concrete and steel.

In the coming weeks other Sidewalk executives will participate in additional Reddit AMA’s focused on specific aspects of the proposal in greater detail.

Jason Miller is a breaking news reporter based in Toronto. Reach him on email: jasonmiller@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @millermotionpic

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