Our world continues to cater to society's on-demand expectations as technology advances. Need a question answered in a hurry? Ask ChatGPT. Need a quick image of Imperial Star Destroyers descending on the City of New York? Open up Midjourney in Discord and type in "/imagine: imperial star destroyers over the City of New York" and voila! .. well, sort of.  

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I have a lot of fun with these generative AI tools, but "sort of" pretty much always sums up my experience with them. Recently I was curious to try something in the "City Building" context and I wanted to get more specific than, "tell me how to improve the public realm of my neighborhood". So I opened up ChatGPT 4.0 and fed it the following prompt:

Give me a comprehensive urban design plan for how to improve economic opportunities and quality of life conditions along 7th Avenue in the West Village by investing in the public realm between the section of 7th Ave from Greenwich Ave to Carmine Street. Please include any supporting graphics, such as maps, street sections and other illustrations.

The results of this brief "dialogue" are posted here if you care to dig into them. As you can imagine, the more specific we get, the more obscure our "sort of" results become. I won't bother to do a more elaborate critique than that. Suffice it to say, there's room for improvement, but that's not really what I'm here to highlight.

These are examples from the domain of generative AI specifically. It's exciting to glimpse the world of possible efficiencies that generative AI is enabling society to intertwine into our daily lives. Whether through generative AI and the current landscape of large language models, or other iterations of our evolving AI stack, the way these technologies interface with how we shape the world around us offers ample opportunity to apply our actual intelligence collectively in thoughtful ways.

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While I don't personally expect that AI will be breaking any meaningful ground on the bigger solutions civic society is up against, (i.e. ranging from mental illness on the rise to the availability of affordable housing and displacement of residents for various reasons) I do see AI beginning to play a role in how we improve cities over the next 5 years.

These are areas where I think Artificial Intelligence is and will play a role in the near term:

• Engagement: AI-driven automations, such as chatbots, are already enhancing citizen engagement and improving service delivery.
• Logistics: Autonomous delivery systems, mobility solutions, and other transportation technologies are set to reshape urban logistics in practical ways.
• Monitoring: Computer vision and advanced data analysis techniques are becoming increasingly valuable for detecting and resolving issues, whether it's crime prevention, maintaining critical infrastructure, or supporting environmental sustainability efforts.
• Planning: While AI cannot represent the views of specific stakeholder groups, it can still serve as a rapid sounding board for ideas and help quickly gather information on land use, current trends, and planning considerations. And this application of generative AI can assist with the eventual need for clearer stakeholder engagement when the time comes.

Can AI truly tell us how to optimize the design of buildings and public spaces by meaningfully contextualizing the world around us? If we aim for more than just a ‘sort of’ city, is that even possible? While I’m skeptical of a fully AI-driven solution, I do believe AI is already helping us gather the data and insights necessary to make more informed, collaborative design decisions. So, how can we bring more first-party data into the AI ecosystem, especially data not typically derived from IoT or computer vision, but rather from people sharing their knowledge and experiences as they build stronger relationships and better places?

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