ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how artificial intelligence (AI) is imagined, adopted, and contested within urban governance and planning in Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing on survey and interview data from planners, policymakers, and AI service providers, it explores how fantasies of control, optimisation, and neutrality sustain enthusiasm for AI even amid uncertainty and institutional fragility. Integrating Lacanian critical theory, post-Marxist discourse, and science and technology studies, the analysis reveals that risk and safety discourses operate ideologically, stabilising contradictions between technocratic optimism and democratic accountability. Findings show low professional preparedness, limited trust in regulatory capacity, and strong demands for localisation, ethical oversight, and treaty-based governance. The chapter argues that AI governance must be understood as a political arena rather than a technical fix – where legitimacy emerges through situated, participatory, and culturally grounded practices that resist the fantasy of frictionless optimisation.
