Illustration credit: McKenna Deighton, Toronto Star
Technology is all around us – but what happens when it is built into the infrastructure of our cities?
As the 2019-2020 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy, John Lorinc studied the multitude of issues related to this question: expectations of personal privacy; how urban planning works; impact of tech on equity; and ways that communities can organize and engage in local democracy. Through his series, Building Smart Smart Cities, John learned from smart city projects around the world and laid out policy priorities to ensure these systems fit into accountable, progressive and democratic city-building efforts.
Building Smart Smart Cities was published in January 2021 in the Toronto Star. Now, it is also available in an open-access publication.