ABSTRACT

This book explores in theory and practice how artificial intelligence (AI) intersects with and alters the city. Drawing upon a range of urban disciplines and case studies, the chapters reveal the multitude of repercussions that AI is having on urban society, urban infrastructure, urban governance, urban planning and urban sustainability.

Contributors also examine how the city, far from being a passive recipient of new technologies, is influencing and reframing AI through subtle processes of co-constitution. The book advances three main contributions and arguments:

  • First, it provides empirical evidence of the emergence of a post-smart trajectory for cities in which new material and decision-making capabilities are being assembled through multiple AIs.

  • Second, it stresses the importance of understanding the mutually constitutive relations between the new experiences enabled by AI technology and the urban context.

  • Third, it engages with the concepts required to clarify the opaque relations that exist between AI and the city, as well as how to make sense of these relations from a theoretical perspective.

Artificial Intelligence and the City offers a state-of-the-art analysis and review of AI urbanism, from its roots to its global emergence. It cuts across several disciplines and will be a useful resource for undergraduates and postgraduates in the fields of urban studies, urban planning, geography, architecture, urban design, science and technology studies, sociology and politics.

part I|75 pages

Autonomous vehicles and mobility

chapter 2|15 pages

Reinforcing and refracting automobility

Urban experimentation with autonomous vehicles

chapter 3|15 pages

Trials and tribulations

Who learns what from urban experiments with self-driving vehicles?

chapter 6|16 pages

A roadmap for the sustainable deployment of autonomous vehicles

Superblocks driving cars out of neighbourhoods

part II|89 pages

Urban robots and robotic spaces

chapter 8|22 pages

Everyday droning

Uneven experiences of drone-enabled AI urbanism

chapter 9|19 pages

Exploring temporal pleats and folds

The role of urban AI and robotics in reinvigorating the cyborg city

chapter 10|14 pages

Robots in AI urbanism

chapter 11|17 pages

Airport robots

Automation, everyday life and the futures of urbanism

part III|88 pages

City brains and urban platforms

chapter 12|16 pages

Ambient commons?

Valuing urban public spaces in an era of AI-enabled ambient computing

chapter 13|18 pages

Encountering limits in cooperative platforms

The more-than-technical labour of urban AI

chapter 14|17 pages

Performed imaginaries of the AI-controlled city

Conducting urban AI experimentation in China

chapter 15|18 pages

Optimizing the immeasurable

On the techno-ethical limits of predictive policing

chapter 16|17 pages

Chinese artificial intelligence governance platforms 2.0

The belt and road edition

part IV|115 pages

Urban software agents and algorithms

chapter 18|15 pages

Caring is connecting

AI digital assistants and the surveillance of elderly and disabled family members in the home

chapter 19|15 pages

AI doctors or AI for doctors?

Augmenting urban healthcare services through artificial intelligence

chapter 21|22 pages

Architectural AI

Urban artificial intelligence in architecture and design

chapter 22|29 pages

Conclusions

The present of urban AI and the future of cities