COUNTERPUBLICS COUNTERPUBLICS COUNTERPUBLICS BY MATTHEW BUI and BIANCA WYLIE COUNTERPUBLICS

Keywords of the Datafied State Data & Society 160 Situating Counterpublic Power in Relation to the Public If we understand the public in public-private partnerships to strictly mean the government as the representative of the public, one could argue that the general public, writ large, has little to no role to play in negotiating PPP con- tracts. [...] The final stages of negotia- tion, by which Waterfront Toronto made increasingly beneficial public value demands, are one of the inputs that led to the demise of the project by impacting the projected profitability and project scope. [...] The negotiation process of the deal was subject to an unusual amount of public oversight for a PPP because a range of publics and counterpublics refused the corporate capture that Keywords of the Datafied State Data & Society 162 attempted to set the terms and boundaries of public engagement. [...] Other urban planners critiqued the project and worked on the side of the counterpublics: they worked both within and from outside government to challenge the domi- nant approach and upsides of innovation that were marketed to the city. [...] As Bianca Wylie elaborates, this negligence to support the counterpublics — to whom the state is accountable — was designed into the process right from the start via the state-created and designed request for proposal.18 That is, the request for proposal process serves as a prime example of how elite-driven models for deliberation reify the subordination of counterpublics.