In this guest post, Dr Nuno Pinto (University of Manchester, United Kingdom), explains the project Coproducing a research agenda for responsible and transparent AI-capabilities for decision support in urban governance, recently funded by a USF Seminar Series Awards grant. A series of events will unfold from October 2025 through July 2026, taking place across the UK, USA, Brazil and online. Stay tuned for opportunities to engage.
Addressing the challenges of generative AI in urban governance
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 (Godier et al, 2024) need to optimise resources, and the digital transition is now the subject of intensive national and global funding (UK Gov 2025, EU Commission 2025). The rapid and accelerating advent of (i) big-data and machine learning and, more recently, (ii) generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has opened to those urban stakeholders many possibilities such as affordability, scope, speed of processes and, at the same time, significant challenges like 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.
These opportunities and challenges have been the subject of intensive academic research covering issues as ethics (Corrêa et al. 2023), representation and democracy (Fontes et al., 2024), tools (Pan et al. 2025) and applications (Jiang et al. 2025). A search on the academic journal database Scopus with keywords “artificial intelligence” AND (“urban governance” OR “urban planning” OR “urban”) gives us an exponential growth in scientific production of over 20% year-on-year since 2020.
There are still insufficient attempts to systematise the current state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice to produce a new and impactful research agenda in the scientific area of urban, one that at least tries to guide new urban governance practices and counter the extremely fast pace of technology development and new product delivery by technology providers.
The chronic gap in the use of quantitative methods and models in general in urban studies and planning (Geertman, 2017) is at real risk of 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). These divides will only be aggravated by observed inequalities of access to new GenAI tools (Bircan and Özbilgin, 2025)
This, in turn, risks (i) alienating a large cohort of urban academics who will feel left behind by the astonishing take-over of GenAI; and (ii) putting urban governance stakeholders less prepared to deal with the range of possibilities technological companies propose without proper scrutiny, technical validation and, many times, lacking adequacy. These debates must also be inclusive of different urban disciplines (from social sciences to engineering to environmental sciences) that deal with urban governance to avoid deepening discourse and trust siloes.
The seminar series SS25.AI4UG aims at promoting an urgently needed transdisciplinary academic debate with academics and urban governance practitioners on the development of a coproduced research agenda for new responsible and transparent AI capabilities for accessible decision support for urban governance. An agenda that responds to the needs of stakeholders, supported by hard evidence from urban sciences, and engaged with technologists and technology developers. This agenda will consolidate its validity via demonstrative training sessions for Early Career Researchers (ECRs, as defined by the UKRI) and will be open to other academics and practitioners. It will be disseminated among wider audiences via webinars and policy briefs, with the support of leading urban governance agencies and science and cultural dissemination forums in the diplomatic and cooperation spaces.
The work plan
The SS25.AI4UG will use a coordinated structure of a seminar [Sx] and training [Tx] events with academics and urban governance practitioners. Results and conclusions will be disseminated globally via a follow-up webinar [Webx] and policy brief [PBx]. Using a workshop methodology to allow academics and urban governance stakeholders to contribute their views and needs, the seminars and training events will build up towards the final co-produced agenda. Each [Sx] will be coupled with a [Tx] on methods for the conceptualisation of meaningful AI-based capabilities. ECRs and urban governance stakeholders will participate in the training sessions.
Key urban governance topics will drive the discussions, including 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.
The SS25.AI4UG will have three key events:
- [S1] “What AI for Urban Governance” + [T1] “AI for advanced urban simulation methods”, Suffolk University, Boston MA, USA, 8 to 10 December 2025;
- [S2] “AI as a tool for inclusive DS” + [T2] “AI for participatory methods”, University of Brasília, Brasília DF, Brazil, 8 to 10 April 2026;
- [S3] “A coproduced research agenda for responsible and transparent AI for DS in urban governance” + [T3] “A methodological toolkit to include responsible and transparent AI in urban governance research”, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, 22, 23 and 24 July 2026.
It will have a series of webinars and policy briefs that will complement the events:
- The launch [Web0] Webinar on 24 October, 14.00 British Summer Time. Register here: https://usf_ss25_ai4ug.eventbrite.co.uk.
- [Web1] and [PB1] at the end of January 2026;
- [Web2] and [PB2] at the end of May 2026;
- [Web3] and [PB3] in October 2026.
Our target audiences
The SS25.AI4UG will bring together urban academics and urban governance practitioners. The seminars and training sessions will be open to these communities in the three countries, and the follow-up webinars and policy briefs will disseminate the findings globally to wider communities. Policy briefs will be translated into the most spoken languages of the world to break language barriers and reach out to urban governance communities that don’t necessarily read in English.
We expect ECRs to engage in the seminars and to deliver on the methodologies used in the training sessions to critically deconstruct the conceptual and technical complexities of developing and using GenAI models.
The SS25.AI4UG has the support of the Massachusetts Municipal Association (USA), the National Federation of Mayors (Brazil) and the Local Government Information Unit (UK). These major institutional stakeholders will provide valuable support in mobilising the local and national communities of urban stakeholders and in disseminating the findings of the seminar series.
Expected impacts and long-term outcomes
This seminar series is expected to generate in a very short-term a forum of discussion with academics and urban stakeholders to address the fast pace of GenAI development in urban. It will then consolidate this forum and create a large community of academics and urban stakeholders engaged in research and practices in urban governance, where GenAI is presenting itself as a central future avenue of development.
By coproducing a research agenda with practice implications in the context of three countries, all leading on urban research and with different regulatory practices, this seminar series will give a robust contribution to the discussion about the development and use of AI in urban governance.
At the end of the SS25.AI4UG, the co-produced agenda (in the form of an academic article and a series of policy briefs) is expected to help the academic and practice communities navigate with much more conceptual, technical and policy confidence the new spaces created by GenAI in urban governance.
The SS25.AI4UG is also expected to create a stable community of academics and practitioners in urban governance who will take the discussions on and develop joint research and policy initiatives.
The engagement of ECRs will launch the seeds for the next generation of researchers to better position themselves in the tech-driven, fast-paced spaces of GenAI for urban governance.
How to engage and participate
Bookmark the SS25.AI4UG webpage and keep updated about the different events and outcomes of the seminar series.
ECRs will be able to apply to a small SS25.AI4UG fund of £120 to co-fund their participation. Each training event [T1], [T2] and [T3] will have a competitive call to select up to 10 ECRs. More information about how to apply and the selection criteria can be found at the SS25.AI4UG webpage.
Contact us at nuno.pinto@manchester.ac.uk for further information about this seminar series.