topos 132 | AI Pioneers

Artificial intelligence is no longer a promise of the future – it has already become part of the systems that run our cities. It drafts emails, designs buildings, steers traffic, and powers civic chatbots. It answers before we finish asking. Sometimes it lies, sometimes it hallucinates – and yet it always responds. This issue of topos does not celebrate AI, nor does it dismiss it. Instead, it takes the machine seriously. For planners, architects and urbanists, AI is now embedded in the very fabric of urban life – silently shaping infrastructures, simulations, and decisions. But what values are hidden in its code? Who defines its assumptions? And what happens when the model becomes more legible than the street itself? We explore the promises and perils of a technology that reproduces the past more than it imagines the future, that optimises for efficiency but risks narrowing democracy. From hackers and ethicists to urban designers and policy-makers, this issue uncovers the ethical, political and practical questions behind AI’s urban influence. AI Pioneers asks not what AI can do for cities, but what it means when urbanism itself becomes a function of AI.

Topics

URBANISM.EXE
How AI is Influencing Urban Futures

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
An Overview

THE AI AUGMENTERS
AI Augmenting Architects at Foster + Partners

THE NAVIGATOR
Generative Design Through Patrik Schumacher

LONDON AI
A City Portrait of London

THE STRUCTURISERS
MVRDV NEXT Between Research and Practice

THE CONDUCTOR
Tim Fu on AI's Creative Potential

SHADOW AND LIGHT
The Risks of AI in Planning

THE CHOREOGRAPHER OF URBAN INTELLIGENCE
Carlo Ratti on Human-Centered, Data-Driven Urbanism

THE CATALYST
Oliver Thomas Bridges Computation and Design

THE ARCHITECT OF EMPATHIC INTELLIGENCE
Shicong Cao Champions Human- Centered Data

ARTIFICIAL ILLUSIONS
The Unseen Cost of Intelligent Machines

HELSINKI'S QUIET AI REVOLUTION
A City Portrait of Helsinki

THE PURPOSER
Siegfried Zhiqiang Wu links AI to Planning

THE PARTICIPANT
Dr. Yan Wang Shapes Urban AI Ethics

CONTRIBUTORS