Trajectories of AI urbanism and Smart Cities – Continuity, Acceleration, Transformation, Disruption?

This topic invites theoretical debate and empirical contributions centred on the contested relationship between smart cities and urban AI. Technologies predominantly associated with smart cities such as high-speed internet, sensor networks, data centres and the internet of things appear to be simultaneously backgrounded and accelerated by the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). From a technological perspective, Urban AI is often framed as a more advanced stage of smart urbanism, with data centres and digital platforms providing foundations or fertile sediment nurturing data-hungry forms of urban AI. However, where smart cities were associated with logics of visualisation and optimisation AI-driven cities have been described as “autonomous”, with potentially unpredictable self-learning systems embracing constant change and recalibration. As robotic and autonomous systems, city brains and other forms of AI learn to decide and act without human intervention, it is not clear that the logics driving the expansion of AI urbanism will necessarily be the same as those associated with smart cities. Consequently, the question of how various forms of AI might reinvigorate, accelerate, transform or disrupt smart cities is a matter of concern. Even as smart technologies and AI are both characterised by a mutually constitutive relation with cities, the transformative potentials of AI urbanism are likely to differ from those associated with smart city technologies as non-human intelligences and agencies enter the processes through which cities and digital systems continuously shape, learn from, and adapt to one anotherThe scope of this Research Topic encompasses empirical, theoretical, and policy-focused research attending to the introduction of AI into the highly networked and technicised urban environments that characterise smart cities. Submissions should engage not only with the technical aspects of such encounters but must also consider the governance, policy and managerial aspects arising from the introduction of AI into smart cities and their implications for urban life and urban futures. Articles may address, but are not limited to themes addressing continuities, synergies, tensions and disruptions observed or anticipated as artificial intelligences encounter smart cities, including those related to:• Transition and discontinuity in technologies and infrastructures • Policy agendas emphasising for instance sustainability, competitiveness and economic development. • Imaginaries, including for instance comparisons of urban futures implied by policies and promotional materials associated with smart technologies and urban AI. • Logics and rationales such as optimisation, inclusion, automatization, adaptation and autonomy, as well as critical consideration of the implications of such logics regarding for example citizen participation, displacement of labour, surveillance and techno-managerialism.• Considerations of governance in smart cities and AI urbanisms are also welcome, with attention, for instance to the role of citizens, technology and policy actors and non-human agencies in the governance of technicised urban environments. • Empirical material centred on the introduction of AI into smart cities, including regional perspectives from both the Global North and Global South.• Comparative studies of AI deployments in environments characterised by different degrees of “smartness”. This Research Topic welcomes interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse submissions from fields such as urban geography, innovation studies, robotics, sociology, computer science, human-computer interaction, STS, urban management and planning and environmental management. Suitable manuscript types include original research articles, policy analyses, reviews, and perspectives. Topic editors: Miguel Valdez, Helena Atteneder Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/82561/trajectories-of-ai-urbanism-and-smart-cities---continuity-acceleration-transformation-disruption