Abstract

This workshop forms a novel research community around the topic of “urban AI”. Within it, we will scrutinise the intersections of artificial intelligence(s) and cities — i.e. urban life, spaces, places, geographies, infrastructures, and practices — from a multidisciplinary, design-oriented perspective. There is a need to form this community, as AIs are being infused as parts of cities at an increasing pace. Thus far research on AIs have been somewhat split into two differing approaches; one that is focused on the grassroots, practice-based engineering of novel AI applications; and another that assumes a large-scale, future-oriented and philosophical approach. We suggest that a third perspective, informed by disciplines that build bridges between high level concepts and empirical realities, is necessary to straddle these two. Traditionally, this has been the realm of design; In this workshop, we ask what themes, questions and methods should be addressed by an emerging design-oriented urban AI research community?