The goal of the SMART mobile application is to use Augmented Reality and GIS technologies to increase public engagement and citizen participation in the planning of Sustainable Urban Development initiatives such as the one in Sidewalk Toronto. Therefore, embracing and promoting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The SMART app can be easily adapted to multiple cities in Canada and Globally, and to a diverse number planning scenarios.

Jaydeep Mistry (middle-right): I was the Lead Engineer for the team. I am completing my Masters in Geography, working with GIS and Open Data. My expertise in GIS systems and app development allowed me to use use bleeding edge technology and make this AR app.

Juan Carrillo (middle-left): I had the fortune of engaging with the very talented people in this team by applying Project Management principles to make the most out of each one's skills. Also, I did some 3D data editing and a rare arrangement of the proposed buildings :). Currently, I am completing a Masters in Computer Software at the University of Waterloo; my research focuses on Software Development and Machine Learning for applications in the Geospatial field. I am a passionate self-learner, and I also love sports, especially freestyle BMX and Ultimate frisbee.

Fraser King (far-left): I was the head of the User Experience (UX) department for the project as well as the creator of the demo video used in our sales pitch. I am currently finishing up the second year of my Master’s of Science degree at the University of Waterloo, specializing in remote sensing of Arctic snow. I also completed my undergraduate degree in Computer Science at Waterloo, and used the design skills I learned there coupled with on-the-job experience to bring the S.M.A.R.T. App to life. I enjoy creating my own iOS apps/games on the side and my favorite food is Fettuccine Alfredo.

Manpreet Singh Chahal (far-right): I was the Lead Researcher for the team. I am completing my Masters in Geography, working with Crowdsourcing and Public Participation GIS at the University of Waterloo. I completed my undergraduate degree in Biology and Environmental Science with a minor in GIS at McMaster University. My background in using GIS technology in my undergraduate thesis and thus far in my Masters program has given me the experience to compile all of the research needed to create this AR app. In my spare time, I enjoy playing sports such as basketball and soccer and watching hockey.

[1] City of Toronto Open Data Portal. (2018). Toronto 3D Massing - Open data. [2] City of Toronto Open Data Portal. (2014). Neighbourhoods - Open data.

At the time that this app is published, only the waterfront scenario in Toronto can be seen, but this is to show that this will be replicated in other development scenarios in Canadian cities such as in Vancouver and Montreal.

The Esri Augmented Reality (AR) component is the highlight of the SMART app. It produces a realistic 3D model of the downtown core of the city of Toronto on an imagery basemap. The most important aspect is that it shows potential types of development that can be built on the Sidewalk Toronto property and users can see which types of development they would prefer to have in that area. The unique aspect of the AR component is that it can only be run on an Android emulator or Android smartphone as Android currently has the highest capabilities with AR, while other companies are still at the beta testing stage with AR. Another unique aspect about AR is that the user can move around with their Android smartphone to zoom in and out of different 3D buildings and see the entire extent of the Toronto Waterfront property and the Toronto downtown core.

The Esri 3D web map component is hosted on ArcGIS Online. It is another option for visualization that is provided to users if the AR component happens to not work on their smartphone. The 3D web map component is somewhat similar to the AR component in that users can see a 3D model of the downtown core of the city of Toronto on a basemap in addition to 3D models of different buildings that can potentially be developed on the Sidewalk Toronto property on the Toronto Waterfront.

The Live Dashboard is an Operations Dashboard hosted by Esri that is used to provide results of feedback by users on the app. The Live Dashboard shows a 2D map of the city of Toronto and shows all of the points where users have participated in the feedback process using the SMART app. In addition, there is a bar graph that shows percentage of users from each age group that have participated in the feedback process using the SMART app. There is also a pie chart representation of how many users have participated in the feedback process using the SMART app over time. This Dashboard is used to show which SDG is a priority for citizens in the development of Sidewalk Toronto.

From the chosen SDGs, SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy, SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, and SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being, the SDGs have been organized into three main categories: transportation, recreation and public/residential. Transportation focuses on a mobility system that is safer and more convenient than the private car at much lower cost. Recreation focuses on a public realm that puts people first and is vibrant, comfortable and lively throughout the year. Public/residential focuses on a close-knit community that uses data to improve city services and keep its citizens safe.

When selecting the Toronto waterfront AR scenario, the user can see the different types of development that will be implemented in the area. They can see the transportation, recreation and public/residential scenarios for development and the app will give them the options to provide feedback. The transportation scenario focuses on a mobility system that is safer and more convenient than the private car at much lower cost. In the feedback form for the transportation scenario, the user can select whether they strongly agree, agree, are neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree with easy access to public transportation near the user’s home being a priority. The recreation scenario focuses on a public realm that puts people first and is vibrant, comfortable and lively throughout the year. In the feedback form for the recreation scenario, the user can select whether they strongly agree, agree, are neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree with participating in outdoor community activities being a priority. The public/residential scenario focuses on a close-knit community that uses data to improve city services and keep its citizens safe. In the feedback form for the public/residential scenario, the user can select whether they strongly agree, agree, are neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree with living close to health and safety service providers being a priority.

For sustainable urban development, we are looking at the Sidewalk Toronto project being planned by Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto. Sidewalk Labs is Alphabet Inc.’s urban innovation organization. Its goal is to improve urban infrastructure through technological solutions, and tackle issues such as cost of living, efficient transportation and energy usage. Sidewalk Labs is reimagining cities to improve quality of life. Growing cities face many challenges such as longer commutes, higher rents, and fewer opportunities. New technology can help, but people can’t afford to wait for digital advances to transform the urban environment. Sidewalk Labs is creating a new type of place to accelerate urban innovation and serve as a replication model for cities around the world. Sidewalk Labs is designing a district in Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront to tackle the challenges of urban growth, working in partnership with the tri-government agency, Waterfront Toronto, and the local community. This joint effort, called Sidewalk Toronto, aims to make Toronto the global hub for urban innovation. Sidewalk Toronto is a joint effort by Waterfront Toronto and Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs to create a new kind of mixed-use, complete community on Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront, beginning with the creation of Quayside. Sidewalk Toronto will combine forward-thinking urban design and new digital technology to create people-centred neighbourhoods that achieve precedent-setting levels of sustainability, affordability, mobility, and economic opportunity.

The goals of Sidewalk Toronto are to provide a mobility system that is safer and more convenient than the private car at much lower cost, housing and real estate that is more efficient and more affordable, a new standard of environmental sustainability, a public realm that puts people first and is vibrant year-round, a close-knit community that uses data to improve city services, and open digital infrastructure that inspires innovation. To accomplish the objective of sustainable urban development, we have decided to implement the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are related with the goals that Sidewalk Toronto is trying to accomplish. These include SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy, SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, and SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being. We have decided to categorize these SDGs into three main categories: Transportation, Recreation and Public/Residential.

Currently, Sidewalk Labs provides more face-to-face meetings and a few online options for citizens to participate in the planning of the development project. Our app incorporates Augmented Reality (AR) so that people can actually see what types of development can happen on the site and provide feedback on which ones they would prefer to see and which SDGs should be promoted to create a sustainable urban development on the Toronto waterfront.

The goal of the SMART app is to use AR technology to increase public engagement in sustainable urban development initiatives such as the one in Sidewalk Toronto so that more attention is paid to accomplishing the SDGs. The SMART app is designed with having replicability for multiple planning scenarios and cities in Canada such as in Vancouver and Montreal.

The main feature of the SMART app is the AR scenario. When the user enters the app, they will see the landing page where they can look at each city/scenario that this app can be used in. They can also find more information on the SDGs that are relevant to this project on the landing page and select the tab to go to the next page with more information. At the time that this app is published, only the waterfront scenario in Toronto can be seen, but this is to show that this will be replicated in other development scenarios in Canadian cities such as in Vancouver or Montreal. In this case, the user can select the Toronto scenario to see the AR of proposed development on the Toronto waterfront. When selecting the Toronto waterfront AR scenario, the user can see the different types of development that will be implemented in the area. They can see the transportation, recreation and public/residential scenarios for development and the app will give them the options to provide feedback. The transportation scenario focuses on a mobility system that is safer and more convenient than the private car at much lower cost. In the feedback form for the transportation scenario, the user can select whether they strongly agree, agree, are neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree with easy access to public transportation near the user’s home being a priority. The recreation scenario focuses on a public realm that puts people first and is vibrant, comfortable and lively throughout the year. In the feedback form for the recreation scenario, the user can select whether they strongly agree, agree, are neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree with participating in outdoor community activities being a priority. The public/residential scenario focuses on a close-knit community that uses data to improve city services and keep its citizens safe. In the feedback form for the public/residential scenario, the user can select whether they strongly agree, agree, are neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree with living close to health and safety service providers being a priority.

Our primary objective is use our technical GIS knowledge, creativity, ability to innovate, and teamwork to produce a relevant and functional Mobile App using the Esri platform. The way in which we are accomplishing this objective is that we are using ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Operations Dashboard, ArcGIS Web App Builder, ArcGIS Android Runtime APK, and ArcGIS AR. We are looking to showcase our skills using these Esri platforms. Our secondary objective is to build strong sense of community among senior undergraduate and grad students in the GIS field. The way in which we are accomplishing this objective is that all of us are Teaching Assistants tutoring Undergrad courses and have an interest in helping the broader community. This app is focused on the theme of Sustainable Urban Development and uses Canadian Open Spatial Data.

Citizens. Citizens of Toronto are being influenced by the media into viewing the development of Sidewalk Toronto as a negative idea. Pain points are that even though Sidewalk Labs are guaranteeing they will take care of all development on the site, the government does not like that they will want a portion of the taxpayers’ dollars and also Sidewalk Labs want to develop on the entire waterfront, instead of just Quayside as initially agreed to by the government. The governments and the media are trying to influence the citizens of Toronto into believing that the development of Sidewalk Toronto on the Toronto Waterfront property will be a huge negative for the city.

Private Companies. Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto are the two private companies that are looking to develop Sidewalk Toronto on the Toronto Waterfront property. Sidewalk Labs is Alphabet Inc.’s urban innovation organization. Sidewalk Labs is designing a district in Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront to tackle the challenges of urban growth, working in partnership with the tri-government agency, Waterfront Toronto, and the local community. This joint effort, called Sidewalk Toronto, aims to make Toronto the global hub for urban innovation. Sidewalk Toronto is a joint effort by Waterfront Toronto and Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs to create a new kind of mixed-use, complete community on Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront, beginning with the creation of Quayside.

Governments. The municipal government of Toronto, the provincial government of Ontario, and the federal government of Canada are all dealing with Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto in terms of how much of the Toronto Waterfront property will be developed and how much revenue it will generate. The governments are acting as barriers to the development of Sidewalk Toronto on the Toronto Waterfront property.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, which provide a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests. In the case of the SMART app, we have narrowed down the 17 SDGs to 5 SDGs that we believe are most applicable to sustainable urban development in Canadian cities.

SDG 3. Good Health and Well-Being. It involves ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages.

SDG 7. Affordable and Clean Energy. It involves ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.

SDG 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth. It involves promoting sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.

SDG 9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure. It involves building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialization and fostering innovation.

SDG 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities. It involves making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

Governments and private companies such as Sidewalk Labs need to be more transparent with information on the Sidewalk Toronto project with its citizens. Sidewalk Labs should be focused on asking Torontonians what they think their city needs most and figuring out how to offer that. It should be clear about what the tradeoffs will be. Instead, it’s assuming that the technology it brings will be immediately appreciated, and it’s already trying to figure out how to be rewarded. Had Sidewalk Labs been transparent from the start, there would not have been controversial documents to leak.

Citizens need to provide feedback to governments and private companies such as Sidewalk Labs, while governments and these private companies should use that feedback to provide better public services to citizens. Currently, the main avenues in which citizens can provide feedback are more face-to-face meetings, city halls, town halls, and few online web forms. Through these forums, not everyone is able to get their say on an issue. Only a select few citizens are able to engage in issues plaguing the entire city. The SMART app will provide an option to allow any citizen using the app to provide instant feedback so that governments and Sidewalk Labs can see what types of development citizens want to see on the Toronto Waterfront property and can plan development accordingly.

No matter who the citizens is, anyone can participate in the planning process of Sidewalk Toronto using the SMART app. Anyone can participate in the app and provide feedback. Currently, Sidewalk Labs provides more face-to-face meetings and a few online options for citizens to participate in the planning. The SMART app plans to incorporate AR so that people can actually see what types of development can happen on the site and provide feedback on which ones they would prefer to see and which SDGs should be promoted to create a sustainable urban development on the Toronto waterfront.

Participatory planning emphasises involving the entire community in the strategic and management processes of urban and rural planning, overcoming conflict and harmonising views across many different groups of stakeholders. AR creates environments that can be directly entered into and interacted with, improving the quality of the feedback across these groups, and allowing the visualisation, communication and evaluation of new developments. Immediate benefits include the ability to highlight what materials will be used in a development, what buildings may look like inside and outside, how they may impact on nearby land and even small details such as where shadows will form or crowding may occur. The key idea is that participatory planning focuses on the collective, with decision making and policy making occurring through active interactions between all stakeholders on an ongoing basis, not just during a one off consultation exercise which is common now. It is less targeted at problem solving and looks more at mutual learning, empowerment and ongoing partnerships with a sharing of the responsibility for designing and building a new urban environment under which everyone will benefit.

The app was designed to be an ecosystem that can facilitate multiple projects that can be enhanced by citizen feedback, Augmented Reality, real-time analytics, and more. When the user first opens the app, they are presented with a list of current projects available on this platform. It can display projects from virtually any stakeholders such as governments or private organizations that want user feedback on the project. Tapping the menu icon on the top-left corner of the app opens up the menu, which show the three main panel of the app: Projects, Bookmarks, and Contact. The Projects tab is the main tab showing the list of all projects. The Bookmarks tab is a shortlist of projects that the user can bookmark to come back to at a later time. The contacts tab allows the user to contact the developers of the app, but this can be configured to contact the representatives of an individual project. There is also a Settings menu available on the top-right side of the app where the user can change the account they are signed in with, or change the personal information they have provided about their accounts.

Clicking on any particular project opens up its Project page. For this app challenge, we used the Toronto Waterfront project under Sidewalk Labs as an example. The Project page has five main features: project overview, dashboard, feedback, 3D View, and AR View. The first thing the user sees is the project view where they can read about the project’s description, know about the stakeholders, the SDGs that the project tackles or any set of themes that the project managers want the end user to know about. The dashboard tab shows an ArcGIS Operations Dashboard which shows statistics about the engagement of the project with the citizens of its community. Depending on the type of data collected, it could be possible to see user’s address and filter by community, or see a person’s age and filter opinion by age cohorts. There are virtually limitless data attributes of a project and its users that can be visualized on a dashboard which really improves on transparency, urgency, and responsiveness of the project. The third tab is a Feedback tab where the user can answer questions that the project managers can configure per project to get live citizen feedback about the project. These feedback questions and answers can be structured in any number of ways, and then visualized on the dashboard tab, or on an online platform version of this app.

The two main features of the app are the 3D View, and the AR View. Instead of having to come to a physical space to meet and discuss these projects, where there need to be paper prints of the project plan, or physical models of the project, users can instead use the AR and 3D views of the app to give their feedback from wherever they are. The AR view shows the project data in a 3D scene with their smartphone’s camera and they can virtually see how the project will look like if it were to be developed in real life, as well as the user can physically move through the scene by walking around with their smartphones. The 3D view slows a more controlled version of the same data, where AR functionality is disabled, and the user can precisely move around the scene using finger gestures.

To install the SMART app on an physical Android smartphone, you need to do the following:

1. Obtain an Android smartphone that is listed on the list of supported Android devices to use Google’s ARCore software. Supported devices are listed here.
2. The Android smartphone needs to allow Developer Mode so you can install the app as an APK from outside the Google Play Store. To activate developer mode, please follow the instructions available here.
3. Install Google’s ARCore software on the Android smartphone before you install the APK for a better user experience. You can find the app on Google Play store. It should look like this app.
4. Move a copy of the APK onto the Android device, either by accessing the APK from a cloud-storage solution such as Google Drive, or downloading the APK onto a computer and moving the find to the smartphone via a physical USB cable.
5. Once you have completed the previous instructions and the APK is on the smartphone, you can go to the APK by navigation to it using the native folder explorer app on the smartphone, and selecting to install the APK. There may be multiple set of permissions you have to accept before Android will allow the app to be installed, which can include: a.) Allowing the Android to allow an APK outside the app store. b.) Allowing the app to use the native camera of the smartphone.

For the best experience, please install the SMART app on a physical device. If you are not able to, or would like to try the app first on an Android Emulator, you need to do the following:

1. The Android Emulator needs Android Studio for having the best experience and control of using the emulator. Please install Android Studio.
2. Obtain a copy of the source code for the SMART app. The source code is in a file called ‘ARCoreDemo-Android’. You will also need to obtain the Android Runtime libraries that allow ARCore functionality with ArcGIS Runtime Android SDK, its files are listed below: a.) Arcgis-android-100.4.1-arbeta3.arr b.) Arcgis-android-100-4-1-arbeta3.pom
3. If you are using a Windows device, you need to move all of the ArcGIS AR beta libraries with the name ‘arcgis-android-100.4.1-arbeta’ to the following folder (if the file path does not exist, you will need to create the chain of nested folders): a.) C:\Users[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\extras\m2repository\com\esri\arcgisruntime\arcgis-android\100.4.1-arbeta3 b.) The file path above for you may be different for your device, but this was a key library required for Android Studio to build its APK for any device.
4. Open Android Studio, select to open an existing project and navigate to the folder where you have the app source code. If not renamed, the source code folder should be called: a.) ‘ARCoreDemo-Android’ b.) NOTE: This folder name was left as the original folder name from the Demo code that Michael Leahy had provided because we were unsure what exactly would be safe to change that not break the app functionality.
5. Before you install the app on any device, in Android Studio from the options on the top, click Build, and from the dropdown click Build Project, which will compile all the code and build a developer or debug version of the APK, ideally used for development and testing. a.) If there are any errors in the build, on the bottom menu where will be a Build tab where you can read where exactly the errors are coming from, take a moment to read through the errors and see how to fix them. If you are having too many difficulties, feel free to look online or contact the developers of the app.
6. Now you will need to create an emulator to run the app. In android Studio on the top right there are a set of buttons, one is called Android Virtual Device (AVD) Manager which allows you to configure and run Virtual devices, or emulators.
7. Open AVD and configure an AVD with the following parameters (make sure to pick the specified parameters, other variants may have API compatibility issues and we cannot ensure it will work): a.) Pixel as the device. b.) Google API 27, Oreo Operating System for Android 8.1 as the system image. c.) For Back Camera, make sure you set it to be Virtual Scene. d.) All other settings can be left as default and you can finish creating the AVD: i.) For more specific set of AVD parameters, check out the Pixel_AVD_Settings.txt file provided with the app submission. ii.) NOTE: to improve performance of AVD you want to allocate more CPU cores and RAM because the images and 3D scenes can become quite demanding.
8. Run the AVD you created. There is a panel of buttons on the side, click the bottom most one with three dots which will open a panel of Extended Controls. Go to Settings, Advanced settings, and make sure OpenGL API Level is set to the following: a.) Renderer Maximum (Up to OpenGL ES 3.1) b.) Restart your AVD for the change to take effect.
9. Since the AVD comes with a very limited set of apps installed, the ARCore app will not come pre-installed. In the app submission documents, find the ARCore APK file listed below and drag-drop it onto the AVD while it is running to install the ARCore libraries into the emulator. a.) ‘Com.google.ar.core_1.5...’ b.) NOTE: If the version above does not work, try the newer version: ‘com.google.ar.core_1.7...’
10. Now, open the Camera app on the AVD to open a virtual scene. This is important to allow the ARCore functionality when the SMART app is running.
11. Now that the AVD is setup for the app, back in Android Studio on the top bar click Run and select Run ‘app’, then select the AVD and the app should be installed in the emulator after a moment.
12. To navigate around in the virtual scene of the AVD, you can hold the ALT key and then use WASD keys to move horizontally, and QE keys to move vertically.

To recreate the 3D dataset presented in the visualizations, follow these steps:

1. Download the “Toronto 3D Massing data” from Toronto Open Data portal in Multipatch format.
2. Create a local scene using ArcGIS Pro and load the data from step 1.
3. Copy some of the existing buildings into the Waterfront area.
4. Move/rotate the buildings and color them to follow the three major SDGs categories.
5. Use the tool located in: Data Management > Package > Export as a Scene Layer Package, to export the scene into a file with .slpk format.
6. Import the .slpk into ArcGIS Online.
7. Create a Web Scene from the Scene Layer Package.
8. Create a Web App from the Web Scene.
9. Configure all layers and Web App to be shared to everyone publicly.

[1] Conte, D. & Morris, J. (2019). How will Virtual Reality change the way we plan sustainable, smart cities? Lexology. [2] Fox, C. (2019). Sidewalk Labs offers to pay for Waterfront LRT in exchange for cut of 'Quayside' tax revenue. CP24. [3] Protalinski, E. (2019). ProBeat: Tech company expansions need to be less arrogant and more transparent. Venture Beat - Heartland Tech. [4] Rider, D., Oved, M., Benzie, R., & Boutilier, A. (2019). Politicians react with shock, anger to Google’s sweeping vision for Port Lands. The Star. [5] Sidewalk Labs. (2019). Sidewalk Labs. [6] Sidewalk Labs & Waterfront Toronto. (2018). Sidewalk Toronto. [7] Sidewalk Labs & Waterfront Toronto. (2018). Sidewalk Toronto Public Engagement Plan. [8] United Nations. (2015). Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform.