Id		2976
Author		Burry M.
Title		A new agenda for AI-based urban design and planning
Reference		Burry M. A new agenda for AI-based urban design and planning,Artificial Intelligence in Urban Planning and Design: Technologies, Implementation, and Impacts
Keywords
Link to article		https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85137488704&doi=10.1016%2fB978-0-12-823941-4.00005-6&partnerID=40&md5=b50c014fd395b7dd0c45242bb00216c5
Abstract		With artificial intelligence (AI) impacting every aspect of our lives, it is hardly surprising that the conversation around its potential impact on urban design and master planning should be moving rapidly toward the center stage. Architecture and urban design professionals took their time to digitalize their practice relative to manufacturing and engineering, for example, so it is not unexpected that embracing AI has not been a priority concern. With outliers, not least big-tech, no longer waiting in the wings to pick off the low hanging fruit from the urban designers’ digital workbench, the professions are waking up: the possibility that AI automation of niche tasks for certain clients might prove more compelling than calling upon for planning and urban designers time-honored professional expertise. Most in the profession, however, will not have studied still less absorbed artificial intelligence within their modus operandi. What is there to stop an alternative approach to urban design expertise from emerging, one which hybridizes and automates the finding of insights from rapidly expanding data sources displacing reliance on a lifetime of professional know-how? Key constituents of planning, social science, urban design, engineering, and computer science expertise lend themselves to being algorithmized. Their respective custodians need to be vigilant against the possibility of their human skills being supplanted by new “smart” digital tools. Fortunately, for the urban futures professions most at threat, there is a potential alternative bright future for those who can meld their creative skills with the smarts that a working knowledge of AI can bring to urban design. With relatively few designers learning the rudiments of AI, let alone learning how to deploy it, there is a risk that they assume AI has no place in creative practice. This could be matched by AI experts blithely assuming they can develop tools without appreciating the subtleties creatives bring to problem-solving: balancing the pros and cons of diverse options (the design approach) as opposed to homing in on the solution (the engineering approach). This brief chapter seeks to introduce a new agenda for addressing the divide between planning and urban design on one side of a yawning chasm, by bridging across to AI on the other. The core premise is fundamentally shifting urban development toward meaningful citizen participation within the planning and urban design processes leading to more sustainable and resilient future urban environments. Firstly, I will succinctly set the scene with some prognostications on the future of work to presage a positive perspective to the increasing automation of time-honored practices. For readers not especially familiar with AI, I have assembled a catalogue raisonné of 26 AI components such as “machine learning” and “pattern recognition” with a view to explicating the potential value of each within the digital urbanist's digital toolset. I follow this by describing an AI-enhanced alternative workflow for the professional planner and urban designer. It is hypothetical now given the contemporary constraints; the alternative workflow presumes that the current rapid advances in AI will continue. The alternative workflow speculates on how practice might profit (rather than suffer) from the transformative marvels that AI can bring to design when fully embraced. I conclude with some notes and a warning around the vexed issue of “expertise”: what are the risks and benefits of embracing AI within urban design in a world increasingly distrustful of human expertise, let alone robots?. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Metodology
DOI		10.1016/B978-0-12-823941-4.00005-6
Search Database		Scopus
Technique

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