The most honest section of this site. These projects died — and taught the industry more than most success stories. Read the lessons.
✔ Every published entry is editor-reviewed against its sources.
Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs planned one of the world's most heavily instrumented neighbourhoods on Toronto's waterfront — heated pavements, timber towers, sensors everywhere. After years of privacy backlash and its contested 'urban data trust', the project was abandoned in May 2020, officially over pandemic economics. The site relaunched in 2022 as a non-smart, zero-carbon housing plan.
Chicago's 'fitness tracker for the city,' the Array of Things mounted 100-plus modular sensor nodes on streetlight and traffic-signal poles from 2016, measuring air quality, noise and pedestrian traffic and publishing the readings as open data. A University of Chicago-Argonne partnership retired the original nodes in September 2021 after they outlived their planned lifespan, succeeded by the SAGE software-defined sensor network.
In 2017 the Algerian-Spanish joint venture MOBEAL (with Spain's Indra and SICE) was contracted to fit 500 Algiers intersections with adaptive, camera-linked traffic lights run from a Kouba control centre. Only 22 of the 200 first-phase junctions were ever wired; fibre-optic faults and a security refusal to activate the cameras stalled the network, and the Spanish partner withdrew.
Dhaka's World Bank-funded CASE project installed automated signal lights at 29 intersections between 2012 and 2023 for around Tk112 crore, but the systems went largely unused as police kept directing traffic by hand. A separate semi-automated pilot began testing in 2025.
Tallinn has run a recurring series of autonomous-shuttle pilots since 2017. TalTech's ISEAUTO — billed as Estonia's first self-driving bus — was demonstrated in 2018 and commercialised by spin-off Auve Tech; three ISEAUTO shuttles served an Ülemiste–airport route during the EU FABULOS project in 2020. The city and Auve Tech have since run free, temporary public-road pilots in Mustamäe (2022), Kadriorg (2023) and Kodulahe (Dec 2024, using the newer MiCa vehicle), each with a safety operator on board. None has become permanent scheduled service.
Pitched as a 170km linear city for 1.5 million residents, The Line was scaled back in 2024 to a 2.4km first phase for under 300,000 people by 2030 (Bloomberg). Saudi Arabia's PIF suspended construction in 2025 pending review, and by 2026 work was reported halted until after 2030 — a dramatic reversal for its flagship megaproject.