Can AI help design cities?

Enthusiasts envision urban planners using AI to review development proposals, analyze proposed zoning changes, and develop new city master plans or optimize existing ones.

In one recent test case, Virginia Tech professors used generative AI to determine the walkability of an area by using AI tools to analyze images for built environment features like benches, streetlights, and sidewalks. To the extent AI can take over such simple, but labor-intensive tasks, urban planners would perhaps have increased bandwidth to work on more complex problems facing cities—problems such as affordable housing, climate change, and the declining office sector.

The integration of generative AI into the digitalization of urban planning, also known as “PlanTech,” is not without its challenges, though, and the question remains: can AI offer enough value to justify its use?

The cost of building and running AI infrastructure is enormous, both in monetary and environmental terms. If generative AI can only solve the small problems, not the big ones, then municipalities may question whether these expenditures are worth it. Also, in light of their field’s long, tangled history when it comes to inequality, urban planners may be particularly sensitive to concerns about biased training data leading to biased generative AI models.

Have previous technological advancements improved cities?

Despite the tremendous efficiency gains PlanTech has achieved, it is sometimes perceived as part of a constellation of “cool” but gimmicky applications that improve certain aspects of urban life but fail to solve real problems, such as public health crises and burgeoning housing costs.

One of the first widespread attempts to integrate cutting-edge technologies into modern urban planning was the rise of “smart cities” in the early 2000s. Smart cities utilize information and communication technology (ICT), such as 3D imaging and information modeling, to improve the quality of urban services. San Francisco, for example, has implemented a smart waste management system that uses sensors and internet-connected devices to optimize the collection and disposal of waste.

While smart cities’ use of technology…