Why do people oppose smart-city projects?
People said no — 12 documented cases in this atlas, each linked to its sources.
The test: Was it stopped by residents, a court or a regulator rather than by the technology?
Nothing in this group broke. Sidewalk Labs' Toronto waterfront was abandoned in May 2020 after years of privacy backlash, before construction began. Hong Kong had to disable its smart lampposts' number-plate recognition and Bluetooth speed detection after protesters sawed several down. A court suspended Buenos Aires's facial recognition system, and the reason it could is worth reading closely: the statutory limit existed, but the oversight commission was never seated. Stockholm legislated a zero-emission zone, installed the cameras, and an appeals board blocked it days before launch.
Two labels, kept apart. 8 of these are recorded as failed — stopped, cancelled, or demonstrably not doing what it was built to do — and 4 as scaled back, which mostly means a service that still runs but delivered materially less than promised. An entry earns either label only where a named source says so.
✔ Every published entry is checked against the public sources it cites before publication.
The 12 documented cases
The other five patterns
The whole record
Every entry in the atlas that failed or was scaled back, all six patterns in one place, with the arithmetic behind the share: smart city project failures.