There is just as much fact to support bavius as anything factual in the story. If you could get by the "oh cool" mentality you might  realize this is described right in the report .
"Sidewalk's business model is not yet clear Mr. Doctoroff said  the development is primarily a real-estate play."
 Since when are politicians and real-estate  developers and questionable corporations that are primarily data collectors and purveyors of advertising  given blank cheques and given unquestioning approval by citizens who will pay for this and have to live with this.