TL;DR: Sidewalk Labs is like a real estate agent describing the house of your dreams and painting a picture of how happy and prosperous you will be when you live there and how amazing all your neighbours will be. But every time you ask to see the floor plans, they change the subject.
I was excited about it until I met them. I visited an exhibit at some conference or convention center in Toronto couple years ago and talked to some of the people in the company and was extremely turned off by their approach.
Prior to meeting them, I always envisioned a bunch of smart, motivated people with a vision for a futuristic city that would increase well-being, commute, logistics and shit. You know - what they promised.
But then, what I found at the exhibit was all flash, no substance. Their entire model was based around "If we make it look pretty and use buzzwords, no one will notice that we are providing them with no additional value." I have seen 1st year engineering students that put in more thought into design projects than they had.
They seemed to have little understanding of what people wanted in homes. They kept trying to force the "smart" modifier to things that don't need it. For example, the concept of robotic furniture. Almost everyone I know who has bought an apartment in the city would rather furnish the apartment themselves. No one wants "robotic furniture". People want IKEA. Look at this bullshit digital innovations page and how vague it is. This is quintessential "Kickstarter project that promises unrealistic bullshit that is designed to rope in uninformed idiots who browse /r/futurology.
They put an emphasis on mobility - but apparently that just meant bike lanes and "pedestrian-friendly" streets. This means very little, the city already has this and is constantly adding more on its own anyway. This has very little to do with being "smart" or any innovation from Sidewalk Labs. The same is true of every other aspect of how cool their neighbourhood would be.
Now I am going to say some politically incorrect things but they need to be said.
They consistently pretend they are listening to public feedback but they aren't - they're just playing the social media and politics game. At the exhibit they had a "cool visualization-based" survey thing going on asking people what they care about the most. I loitered there for 30 minutes with my friend to see what people are clicking on. Almost a 100% of them said that "price" and "access to shopping/groceries" was the most important factor to them. But that's not what we get in response when they say they are "listening to public feedback".
Almost none of the potential homeowners of this neighbourhood honestly care about incorporating indigenous perspectives or the hollow pandering about equity, inclusivity, and diversity, especially in downtown Toronto.
What people want is decent prices, good floor plans, a relatively upper-class neighbourhood with good restaurants, large supermarkets, and lots of public transit. Literally no one who has the money to buy a condo in Toronto is looking for "financially diverse" neighbours - the opposite, in fact.