Dr Nuno Pinto, Prof Doriana Daroit, and Prof Carlos Rufín
Funding period: 1 July 2025 – 1 October 2026
Type of funding:
Seminar Series
Partner organisations: University of Manchester (United Kingdom), University of Brasília (Brazil), and Suffolk University (United States)
Events: November 2025 in Boston (United States), April 2026 in Brasília (Brazil), and July 2026 in Manchester (United Kingdom)
Organisers: Dr Nuno Pinto (University of Manchester, United Kingdom), Prof Doriana Daroit (University of Brasília, Brazil), and Prof Carlos Rufín (Suffolk University, United States)
Contact: Dr Nuno Pinto
Abstract:
The digitisation of planning and of urban governance processes is an ongoing, accelerated and unstoppable trend in virtually all countries in the world. Post-austerity, cash-strapped local, metropolitan/regional and national governments and agencies need to optimise resources and the digital transition is now the subject of intensive national and global funding. The rapid and accelerating advent of big-data and machine learning and, more recently, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has opened many possibilities (affordability, scope, speed of processes) and, at the same time, significant challenges to urban governance stakeholders (lack of technical capacity and knowledge, lack of funds to implement new solutions, security of technical jobs, ethics, data protection, just to name a few).
Inequalities of access to new AI tools threaten to increase the chronic gap on the use of quantitative methods and models in general in urban studies and planning risks being widened further, either by mistrustful practitioners (perhaps even fearful of AI) or by a large cohort of non-quantitative planning and urban studies academics (ill-prepared for AI). This, in turn, risks (i) alienating a large cohort of urban academics who will feel left behind by the astonishing take-over of AI; and (ii) putting UG stakeholders less prepared to deal with the range of possibilities technological companies propose without proper scrutiny, technical validation and, many times lacking adequacy. It is also mandatory that these debates are inclusive of different urban disciplines (from social sciences to STEM) that deal with urban governance to break discourse and trust siloes.
This seminar series aims at promoting an urgently needed transdisciplinary academic debate with academics and urban governance practitioners on the development of a co-produced research agenda for new responsible and transparent AI capabilities for accessible decision support for urban governance. Key urban governance topics will drive the discussions: policy innovation using GenAI; societal use and impact of GenAI; ethics and good practices; participation, representation and democracy; stakeholders’ access to new GenAI capabilities; open-access vs proprietary GenAI; transferability; data needs; among others. Participants will have a diversity of academic and technical backgrounds to build on a multidisciplinary perspective of these questions. The seminar and training events in Boston and in Brasília will build parts of the discussion towards the final integrative discussion to occur at the event in Manchester.