Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is proving to be a disruptive and radical technology capable of fundamentally redefining the fields to which it is applied (Greenfield, 2017; Coeckelbergh, 2022). In recent years, urban studies are coming to terms with the emergence of AI urbanism and thus with the implications and impacts of this technology on the urban experience, on the built environment and on urban design (Batty, 2023; Cugurullo, 2021; Bratton, 2021). In this context, there is an urgent need for empirical research aiming to shed light on the actual uses of AI technology in the city. However, a conceptual reflection is equally useful (Simon, 2021): starting from the assumption that technology is not neutral this paper investigates the cultural, philosophical, urban planning and architectural conditions that inform the use of AI at the urban scale (Nagenborg et al., 2021).

This paper focuses on the relationship between AI urbanism and its potential sustainability. This relationship inherits a well-known tension in the recent history of urban studies (Yigitcanlar, 2018; Haupt, 2021). On the one hand, there is a perspective that is focused on technology as an analytical tool and as a problem-solving force. On the other hand, there is a long-standing history of urban ecology marked by an attention to the limits of urban development and the balance between urbanisation and nature. The possibility of a relationship between AI urbanism and sustainability is rooted in the contradictions that oppose these two models that can be called smart and eco urbanism. These contradictions concern the vision through which the modern Western thought approaches its own relationship with technology and nature. It is therefore useful to analyse them through the philosophical perspective of Bruno Latour who has dedicated a significant portion of his work to the concepts of modernity, nature and science. In this paper, a closer examination of these three concepts will reveal the necessity for a radical rethinking of modern design culture that can pave the way for a possible relationship between urban AI and sustainability. This focus on design and thus on the need to shift the way we act in the space that surrounds us is powerfully present in Latour’s work (Latour, 2008). In fact, from the perspective of the French philosopher, criticising the concepts of nature, science and modernity is not just a genealogical exercise, but rather a medium for transforming the principles underlying our ability to design society and nature (Latour, 2004).

This critical path through the philosophy of Latour is aimed at developing a twofold argument. First, the fact that a simple juxtaposition between technocentric and ecological perspectives – that is between smart and eco urbanism in cities - provides a weak foundation for a possible relationship between AI and sustainability in the urban context. Secondly, that Latour’s new design philosophy (i.e. post Promethean theory of action) can be a useful conceptual ground for thinking about an ecological implementation of AI urbanism and addressing some of the critical issues that have already emerged in its contemporary application. The next section therefore retraces the conceptual sources of the eco and smart city paradigms, highlighting similarities and differences in order to understand whether this juxtaposition is a solid foundation for designing an AI urbanism for sustainability. This analysis will reveal that there are clear philosophical differences – regarding the concepts of modernity, science and nature, in particular - between these paradigms, that prevent a frictionless fusion. The following section builds on this reflection by analysing the concepts of modernity, science and nature through the work of Bruno Latour. Through Latour’s reflection it will become evident how the shaping of a true urban political ecology requires a radical modification of these notions. Finally, the last section examines the characteristics that the French philosopher assigns to the practice of design by referring to their application in the field of AI urbanism. The aim of this section is to stimulate a discussion on design culture – that is, the principles and perspectives that should guide this practice – that can provide a more stable basis for thinking about a sustainable AI urbanism.

This paper is based on the critical literature that various complementary disciplines, such as urban studies, urban political ecology and geography, have produced on smart and eco-urbanism over the last twenty years. Such literature has resulted in an interdisciplinary effort that, in turn, has produced a highly articulate description of these two paradigms. In this paper, the reinterpretation of many of the concepts that have emerged in this debate through Latour’s thought thus builds on a long-standing critique of smart and eco-urbanism, and has a twofold objective: (1) to show how the critical issues that have emerged in these debates are rooted in certain concepts that have been fundamental to the development of Western thought; (2) to highlight a constructive role for philosophy as an important level of abstraction for the discussion of concepts that can have a profound impact on urbanism.

Smart and Eco urbanism as a necessary but unstable foundation for sustainable urban AI

AI urbanism is in the spotlight today because of both the hype surrounding AI and the predominant role that cities have assumed in global socio-environmental changes. In this context, the hopes and fears that AI raises in philosophical and cultural debates about technology are translated into as many possibilities and issues when it comes to the urban context. Definitions of AI urbanism are thus concerned with the changes that this technology can bring on the urban fabric both in terms of everyday experiences and the built environment (Batty, 2023; Cugurullo, 2021; Bratton, 2021). Indeed, the radical urban impact of AI is affecting interpersonal relations, interaction with institutions and service providers, and the way in which infrastructures, buildings and neighbourhoods are planned, constructed and managed (Son et al., 2023; Golubchikov & Thornbush, 2020; Shapiro, 2019; McCarroll & Cugurullo, 2022).

The scientific literature on AI urbanism is increasing in volume and complexity, highlighting themes already addressed in the smart city debate as well as new ones (Batty, 2018; Cugurullo et al., 2023). The relationship between AI technology and the city appears to be extremely articulated and increasingly in need of interdisciplinary approaches capable of situating the technological datum in a social and environmental context. As we shall see, the theme of the relationship between AI urbanism and sustainability is one of the central issues. This theme is of particular relevance given that studies linking AI and the achievement of sustainability goals have been growing in recent years (Vinuesa et al., 2020; Gill & Germann, 2022; Floridi, 2022). In urban studies, this convergence is expressed in the effort to bring smart and eco urbanism into dialogue (Ahvenniemi et al., 2017; Bibri, 2019, 2020; Bibri et al., 2023; Yiyi Su & Di Fan, 2023). The smart city in which ICTs are used to solve a wide variety of urban problems is associated with the need to make cities more sustainable in the Anthropocene. Institutions are also paying special attention to this connection, as it is exemplified by the fact that the United Nations officially supports smart city policies in both the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda (Mora et al., 2021; Son et al., 2023; Caprotti et al., 2017). That urban AI is seen as a positive factor for urban sustainability stems from this approach. AI is seen as a technology capable of optimising urban systems: supporting data analysis for planning, animating robots capable of managing public and private spaces, optimising traffic flows (through the introduction of AVs, for example), electricity consumption and waste management. Therefore, if in a neo-cybernetic perspective (Zaffagnini & Palmini, 2022; Hnilica, 2020; Picon & Hill, 2020; Ratti & Belleri, 2020; Picon, 2015) we understand the city as a set of flows that can be interpreted as information, AI becomes a powerful tool for analysing and managing urban flows sustainably.

However, the academic literature on the connection between smart and eco urbanism has already pointed out a number of critical issues in this seemingly frictionless narrative towards an artificially obtained sustainability. Indeed, much empirical research has shown over time that cities that have applied smart policies have not necessarily achieved sustainability goals (Yigitcanlar, 2018; Cugurullo, 2018; Yigitcanlar & Kamruzzaman, 2018; Cugurullo, 2013). This is because technological development is not sufficient to take the road to sustainability. Technology must be understood as part of a broader socio-technical system and as one element of a triadic relationship with the natural environment and society, in order to advance the sustainability of cities (Mora et al., 2021; Colding & Barthel, 2017). Moreover, when we consider the evolution of this relationship in the context of AI urbanism, we must take into account some environmental problems related to the construction and use of AI that are nowadays particularly evident. The amount of carbon dioxide emitted for the training of AI systems, the energy and consumption of data centres and their cooling, and the amount of e-waste that is piling up, are now unaddressed issues in the assessment of AI’s sustainability (Sætra, 2023b; Brevini, 2021; Brevini, 2023; Crawford, 2021; Coeckelbergh, 2021; van Wynsberghe et al., 2022; van Wynsberghe, 2021). These material components of digital technology and their environmental impacts remain poorly considered even at the institutional level, given that the European Union, for example, speaks extremely frictionlessly about a transition that will be both digital and ecological (Pitron, 2022). The apparent dematerialisation that these technologies propose is in reality a different materialisation made up of data centres, rare materials, enormous submarine cables and e-waste that must be managed (Pitron, 2022; Crawford, 2021).

Thus, the idea of simple juxtaposing smart and eco urbanism and using this relationship as the foundation of an urban AI for sustainability appears fragile for several empirical reasons. However, the relationship between urban sustainability and urban AI appears necessary given that the former must be a goal if we want to survive the Anthropocene (Bulkeley, 2021; Elmqvist et al., 2019, 2021; Pickett et al., 2016; Wo, 2014; Hodson & Marvin, 2010), and the latter is certainly a pervasive radical technology that is here to stay (Greenfield, 2017; Batty, 2023, Bratton, 2021, Cugurullo, 2021). It is necessary, therefore, to understand how to relate digital and natural environment, the green and the blue to use Luciano Floridi’s words (2020). According to Floridi, philosophy has a major task in this delicate transition, namely to make conceptual design (Floridi, 2019): to produce concepts from which we can derive actions capable of fostering the interaction between the green and blue. This insistence on design is particularly interesting in the context of this paper. Indeed, many of the studies we have cited lament the inadequacy of the juxtaposition between smart and eco urbanism, calling for a different perspective on urban design, capable of going beyond this dichotomy (Mora et al., 2021; Elmqvist et al., 2019; Yigitcanlar, 2018). In addition, as we will see in the following paragraphs, Bruno Latour too, in his attempt to theorize a new mode of agency in the Anthropocene, grants great importance to the concept of design (Latour, 2008).

Conceptual sources of smart and eco urbanism

However, before identifying the concepts through which urban AI design culture can change, it is essential to understand the ideas that characterize design nowadays. The smart city paradigm has been extensively investigated over the last three decades, receiving criticism and underdoing developments that have not left its face unchanged (Harrison et al., 2010; Söderström et al., 2014; Trencher, 2019). However, for the purpose of this paper, what is of interest is the main tenet of smartness, namely that technology, especially digital technology, is the solution to urban issues. Such credo is rooted in the longstanding relationship between technology and urbanisation that took a decisive turn at the beginning of Western modernity with the work of Francis Bacon (1561–1626). In Bacon’s urban utopia, science and technology are not just some of the factors of urbanisation: they are its centre (Cugurullo, 2021). The city will be efficient, happy and just, so the story goes according to Western modernity, if it relies on scientific knowledge. The philosopher of technology Langdon Winner described Bacon’s science with these words: «Science, then, succeeded first as a way of knowing and as a vision of the world. Only later, as scientific technology, did it triumph as a means of control and manipulation. In the end, however, its ultimate success must be accounted to its fulfilment of Baconian ambition – the delivery of power» (Winner, 1977, p.24). The idea of science behind smartness is not conceived as a mere means, but as a comprehensive world view. It is not interested in the contemplation of nature but in its manipulation and control. Finally, it does not have its purpose in abstract knowledge but in concrete power. This idea has imposed itself as one of the cornerstones of Western modernity (Winner, 1977; Latour, 2012) and as a fundamental component in the birth and development of modern urbanism (Palmini & Cugurullo, 2023; Cugurullo, 2021; Karvonen et al., 2021; Duarte & Álvarez, 2019). Particularly in the West, being modern implies also, if not above all, developing a scientific knowledge of nature that ensures its control and gives humans the power to transform it.

The theoretical foundation of eco-urbanism follows a different path. The conceptual relationship between ecology and the city from a simple interest in the health of cities’ ecosystems to the implementation of the ecosystem concept as an interpretative model of the urban fabric (Pickett et al., 2016; Wu, 2014). Thus the focus is not only on how to enhance natural ecosystems, but also on the advantages of interpreting the internal (between different communities and different spaces) and external relationships of the city (with the countryside, with natural elements or with other cities) as ecosystemic relationships. From an urban planning point of view, after the first insights of the urban sociology of R.J. Park and the Chicago School, from the beginning of the 20th century many city models have contemplated a positive relationship with nature, particularly as an alternative to industrial urbanisation (Fu & Zhang, 2017; Sharifi, 2016; Gandy, 2015). In this context, the science of the city is a type of knowledge capable of harmonising urban development within the limits of its natural context (Cugurullo, 2021; Endlicher, 2007). Sustainable urban development means urban expansion within the limits of a bioregion capable of providing resources for the city (Register, 1987). Bookchin (2021), one of the fathers of urban ecology, regarded modern urbanisation as detrimental to the design of a happy and just city. The modern city driven by industrial technology acts as a reducer of the ecological diversity that characterises a thriving city (ivi). This drift of urbanisation can, in Register’s view, only be countered by returning to pre-modern models of urban design or to historical cases in which a not yet fully-formed modernity has hinted at different alternatives (ivi).

It can be inferred from these reflections that technology is not at the core of the tradition underpinning eco-urbanism. Technology has appeared as an important element in this context only in the last two decades (Brevini, 2023; Sharifi, 2016; Hodson & Marvin, 2010). In fact, it was only after the emergence of the smart city paradigm that the topic of technology began to be predominant in the conceptualisation and practice of eco urbanism. It emerges as central in the attempt to bring together smart and eco cities but not in the tradition of urban ecology. This is not surprising given that urban ecology seems distant from the technosolutionism (Sætra, 2023a, b) inaugurated by Bacon and now prominent in the smart city paradigm. Hence, science, modernity and nature are pivotal concepts for the two paradigms we have considered, namely eco and smart, but their development is markedly different. Smartness is based on a science seeking to control and transform nature. In urban ecology, however, science is interpreted as knowledge of the limits of human action and the search for harmony with nature. The first paradigm is heir to a modernity understood primarily as techno-scientific progress; the second traces its models before that modernity or in alternative possibilities to that. In the first case, nature is a resource to be manipulated, in the second a context to live in. An active margin with which to synchronise the conditions of human inhabitancy.

Upon reflecting on these theoretical and empirical considerations, one can see that the simple juxtaposition of smart and eco-urbanism is an unstable basis for an urban design supposed to pursue sustainability in the age of AI. This first part of the paper – which builds on an interdisciplinary critical literature on the two urban paradigms examined – has shown that different empirical elements and conceptual roots contribute to digging a chasm between smart and eco urbanism. The second part will show through the philosophy of Bruno Latour how these concepts can be understood differently. Indeed, rethinking modernity, nature and science is crucial in order to have a solid theoretical basis for sketching out a theory of urban design capable of drawing AI and sustainability together.

On the path towards sustainable urban AI with latour: modernity, science and nature

A copernican counter-revolution: facing modernity

The three concepts addressed in this paragraph, namely modernity, science and nature, are deeply interconnected. The concept of modernity can be interpreted in many directions, but in Latour’s thinking it emerges as a certain relationship between science and nature. In a similar way, according to the French Philosopher, nature is the result of the modern conception of science and finally science is the consequent practice of the modern conception of nature. The aim of this section is to problematise these concepts, essential for the foundation of an AI urbanism for sustainability, and to investigate how Latour’s thought can open up a path capable of taking us beyond the aporias outlined in the previous section.

According to Latour, modernity - a period that begins approximately in the 17th century - consists of a twofold movement: on the one hand, the exponential increase in the assembly of hybrid objects of nature and culture; on the other, a narrative that firmly separates these two spheres of existence (Latour, 2012). In this period, the then new experimental science capable of mobilising ever larger multitudes of objects is presented as politically neutral and objective, while the political body constructed by humans through social contracts is presented as devoid of all those non-human entities that populate it and make it possible. Because of a science that disproportionately multiplies human power and a politics that increasingly permeates nature, the “moderns” have imposed a separation between exact science and the exercise of power. By separating politics from science but always basing force on reason and reason on force, the moderns became for Latour (2012) invincible. They colonised large portion of the world and became a tremendous political power, but they did so in the name of rationality and science. They thought to have taken the high road of history and that the time of uncertainty was over to make room for an era of infinite progress, power and truth (Latour, 2017). Objectivity, effectiveness and profit were the three graces that accompanied this supposed infallible modernisation that perceived other cultures as collectives to be indoctrinated into “true” science, and nature as a resource to be manipulated (Latour, 2007a, b).

However, according to the French philosopher, it is precisely those other cultures and nature that are undermining the project of modernity and forcing us now to think beyond it (Latour, 2012). Indeed, scientificity, which was supposed to be objective and non-politicised, has created an extremely unequal world populated by collectives protesting against the modern mindset. Moreover, nature, which was intended by the moderns as the inert background of our actions, has in the era of the current climate crisis shown its essence as an active and susceptible force. Therefore, it is necessary to think of an overcoming of modernity: science and politics are not two pure domains that sometimes come into contact, but categories through which ex post we analyse objects that have a hybrid essence. Latour’s intention is to shed light on the production of the hybrid objects that modernity hid in order to expose them to democratic debate and control (Latour, 2012). Technological artefacts and scientific discoveries must also be discussed in relation to their social implications, and political decisions must take into account the mass of natural objects and the scientific practices they involve.

Latour’s position undermines the idea of modernity that we have seen underpins the smart city discourse and thus one of the two pillars on which an AI urbanism for sustainability would be erected. In fact, in the corporate version of the smart city paradigm - which is very influential in policy making - technology is often seen precisely as a rational and progressive way of solving cities’ problems and not as one of the politically connoted components that contribute to changes in the urban fabric (Söderström et al., 2014; Greenfield, 2013). Modernisation as well as sustainability if understood in continuity with it are models of development that conceal the complexity of power relations between the actors involved. Models in which the production of hybrids remains in the shadow. As we will see at the end of this section, following Latour (2007b), we are compelled to recognize that between modernisation and sustainability there is a contradiction.

“Go tell your masters that scientists are on the warpath”: a new role for science

Latour shows us how there is a strong link between modernity and science. However, the science of the moderns has certain characteristics: the Galilean idea of understanding objects from their primary qualities (physical and measurable) paves the way for an unprecedented ability to calculate reality (Husserl, 1970; Latour, 2012, 2017). All the qualities that are not mathematically expressible are relegated to the role of secondary qualities and ousted from the backbone of reality (Latour, 2017). From this new quantitative ontology, the new science of the moderns unleashes a renewed capacity to investigate and mobilise nature, which, according to the French philosopher, becomes one of the cornerstones of the moderns’ alleged invincibility (Latour, 2012). The scientific and industrial revolutions, colonialist expansion and the doctrine of globalisation are just a few examples of the power of the moderns. This quantitative-mathematical turn gives concreteness to Francis Bacon’s utopia that we have seen as the foundation of the smart city paradigm: all the problems can be analysed and solved scientifically as long as they can be interpreted quantitatively and then calculated. What we called technosolutionism (Sætra, 2023a) has its origin in such explosion of scientific power at the dawn of modernity. In the smart city, the datafication of the city is nothing more than a new stage in this process of creating a quantitative and calculable ontology (Söderström et al., 2014): information becomes the new primary quality.

In this perspective, science is conceived as a mechanism for solving the problems of society and the environment. Science is the safe, objective rail, the principle of order capable of ensuring a rational process. According to Latour, the role of science must change in the Anthropocene. Science must no longer be an impartial arbiter but a stakeholder; ecological science must realise that it is facing enemies and has therefore entered the realm of politics (Latour, 2017). The sciences that are showing us the effects and causes of climate change cannot play the role to which science was relegated in the moderns’ paradigm: a safe, objective, pure place untouched by essential conflicts, an impartial arbiter (Latour & Schultz, 2023). A science that is truly useful to the community must avoid the risk of depoliticization, which does not mean being corrupted by a political power, but rather asserting the demands and values generated by its knowledge together with the communities that share them and consider them vital (Latour, 2017; Turnhout et al., 2020). Scientists must move away from the role of arbiters and become producers of situated useful knowledge; they must be able to be in the community by also taking responsibility for the political consequences of their research (Turnhout et al., 2013).

There are two main reasons why the change advocated by Latour is necessary in the era of AI urbanism. First because science has already entered the political realm in AI urbanism: the techno-solutionist perspective, in fact, by not questioning any of the political and economic causes of the current ecological crisis takes a political stance, namely the defence of the status quo. This version of AI urbanism is as technologically disruptive as it is politically conservative. The second reason concerns the rhetoric that informs smart and eco urbanism as precursors of AI urbanism. In both cases, science is seen as something external to society: on the smart side as a principle of order that technologically regulates urban chaos (Cugurullo, 2021), and on the eco side as a principle of natural order capable of bringing harmony in the relationship between society and nature (Endlicher, 2007). If Latour’s reflection on science shows the inadequacy of the smart-city paradigm in the Anthropocene, we still need to understand how the eco paradigm is also unsuitable for these tumultuous times of radical artificial intelligences.

Characterising gaia: an ecology beyond the concept of nature

In Latour’s perspective, in the Anthropocene it is no longer possible to conceptualise nature in Galilean terms. Galileo’s nature, in fact, had a movement but no behaviour, it had laws but no agency (Latour, 2017). It was not understood as a living organism, but a set of quantities governed by rules. The climate crisis and the extreme events that bear witness to it force us to realise that nature is an active, limited, sensitive, delicate and wrathful open system (Latour, 2017). The first trait of Gaia (the name of this new conceptualization of nature) is precisely this recapturing of an out-of-control subjectivity. If a mute, passive, quantitative nature is the perfect resource for the moderns’ system of production, Latour’s Gaia is not. This is why, according to the French philosopher, an ecological perspective must necessarily step outside the sole focus on production, development and growth. An economy based solely on the mobilisation of resources for production needs to be replaced by one founded on the mobilisation of resources for the maintenance of the habitability of this fragile open system (Latour & Schultz, 2023). This first characteristic of Gaia already allow us to realise that any perspective of urban ecology that does not question the development model that has characterised modern urbanisation is out of sync in the context of Gaia. It is not a matter of managing the negative externalities of the system, perhaps with the new technological tools offered by AI, but of changing the structure of the system itself.

Alternatively, we could think of a Buckminster-Fuller’s spaceship-earth (2008) model in which the whole of humanity must take care of nature as a global totality, as a complex system that can be managed cybernetically, rationally and without conflict. From an urban perspective, this is also the idea of an urban ecology that believes it is possible to harmonise nature and society through science. However, Gaia is not a stable global system with an unambiguous purpose, and it is not a cybernetic machine whose parts can be harmonized. If this were the case – that is, if Gaia were a hierarchical and ordered system – the techno-solutionist dream of an artificial management of this mega-machine would be rational. However, this perspective starts from the false assumption of understanding nature metaphorically as a machine which for Latour (2017) is a terribly modern mistake. Latour considers Gaia as an active system in which each organism from its own perspective flexes its environment. This is far from a cybernetic system in which all agencies are coordinated by the environment (ivi). The always provisional states of order that emerge from the interactions between organisms are not the result of a mechanism but of processes of interplay that are always in motion. From a philosophical point of view, Latour explains this dynamic through a Kantian conceptualization: the ontology of Gaia is one in which all agents, human and non-human, are considered primarily as ends and not as means (Latour, 2007b). Thus, both human and non-human agents are not parts of a machine that finds its higher purpose in the stability of the system, but free agents capable of modifying their own environment. Gaia is not a cybernetic mega-machine but a teeming plane of force vectors that influence each other, creating occasional balances and imbalances. This is why a proper urban political ecology is incompatible with a first-order cybernetic perspective (Zaffagnini & Palmini, 2022) that claims to harmonise, through the powers of AI, the relationship between the natural and the artificial in the city (Ratti & Belleri, 2020).

As mentioned in the introduction, Latour’s perspective not only reformulates the concepts of modernity, science and nature - crucial for the relationship between AI urbanism and sustainability - but also gives the concept of design a decisive importance. Design represents one of the possible active components of Latour’s reflection, which does not merely reformulate tradition but suggests new methods of action. Latour conceptualises design as the fundamental way in which humans shape the objects and envelopes that enable them to live (Latour, 2008). The range of this term is very broad. One can look at the design of individual objects as well as houses, cities or entire regions in which various actors must be assembled in a specific way. In the age of AI and climate change, design is necessary precisely because there is a need to challenge the way we act in the world. Indeed, design for Latour is a way of acting that has gone through the revision of modernity, science and nature that has been the topic of this section. Design, according to the French philosopher, has ceased to be an idea connected only to the aesthetics of an object. (Latour, 2008). A term such as urban design shows how this concept is used to indicate a reconfiguration of extremely complex objects. However, design has certain characteristics that make it compatible with the questioning of modernity, science and nature that we have been following, and make it a good candidate for thinking about a new relationship between AI and the city, oriented towards sustainability. Design is for Latour opposed to modernisation because it treats the objects it modifies not as matters of fact but as matters of concern. We should then understand why it is necessary to conceive urban AI for sustainability as matters of concern and then try to apply the rules indicated by Latour to its design.

A design theory for a sustainable urban AI

Beyond matters of fact

«We cannot characterize political ecology by way of a crisis of nature, but by way of a crisis of objectivity» (Latour, 2004 p. 19). The joint crisis of modernity, science and nature leads Latour to assert that the first real step towards a real political ecology is to change the way we conceptualise objects in order to then be able to act on them in terms of design. Latour defines matters of fact as the modern way of conceiving of objects, and it is interesting to note how the characteristics of this perspective illuminate many of the problems we are facing in AI urbanism. First of all, matters of facts are objects defined with clear boundaries and which are considered for their internal efficiency (Latour, 2004). It is easy to recall how efficiency is at the heart of the technosolutionistic rhetoric on the urban application of AI and how this object is evaluated in itself as a bearer of order regardless of context. Traffic (Caprotti & Liu, 2022), policing (Tulumello & Iapaolo, 2021), urban infrastructure (Cugurullo et al., 2024), housing (Rosen et al., 2021), urban management and design (Son et al., 2023): all these domains are supposed to be made more efficient through AI because this is an object bearer of order and rationalisation. However, such conception problematically understands AI as a mere instrumental technology to be applied to various fields. Not as a technology capable of completely redefining the fields into which it is grafted, by changing their logic (Coeckelbergh, 2022). Moreover, through this feature, AI is conceptualised as a technology separate from society. Especially AI companies and a relevant portion of the research in computer science and engineering promotes a vision in line with the idea of science that we criticised in the previous section.

The second characteristic concerns the concealment of the technical and material production mechanisms of objects (Latour, 2004). In the AI context, this characteristic develops in two senses. Firstly, the great advances in AI in recent years are based on the large amount of data that our society makes available on which machine learning systems can be trained (Lee, 2018; Floridi, 2022). However, the quality and quantity of data that literally informs the ability of these systems to act can contain biases, errors, inaccuracies that affect the very functioning of these tools (Floridi, 2022). Moreover, as already mentioned, all steps in the production of AI have considerable environmental costs. Like many digital technologies, the material trail connected to these tools is extremely articulated and starts from the extraction of rare materials to then arrive at their application through the assembly of components, the structuring of subsystems and the programming of platforms (Sætra, 2023b). Moreover, AI specifically adds material costs in terms of emissions and water consumption, which are also linked to the training phase and management of data centres (Van Wynsberghe, 2021; Coeckelbergh, 2021; Brevini, 2021; 2023). In the urban context this hiding of the logical and material production processes of urban AI is certainly an obstacle to a just and sustainable use of these tools.

The third characteristic concerns the fact that the implications of these objects are always seen as external to the objects themselves, as if belonging to different universes. In the case of urban AI, this approach is particularly evident when considering the social, ethical, and environmental implications that accompany the use of these tools. These implications are very often addressed in diverse fields such as sociology, ethics, urban planning, environmental sciences, not affecting the conceptual and technical composition of these systems. Finally, according to Latour (2004), the consideration of objects as matters of fact never includes the long-term risks associated with them. These risks are interpreted as historical contingencies that may occur but are not included in the initial definition of the object. Two examples are extremely interesting in the field of urban AI. Firstly, AI is becoming decisive as an infrastructure in our societies both on its own and as a mechanism for enhancing and supporting existing infrastructures (mobility, waste and electricity management systems, for example). The current rush to artificially upgrade our infrastructures conceals the medium- to long-term risk of getting locked into the compulsory use of AIs which, as we have seen, come with considerable environmental costs (Robbins & Van Wynsberghe, 2022). Making AI fundamental for infrastructure, without taking its costs into account, risks leading us into an unsustainable future (ivi). Finally, the increasing autonomy of urban AI is leading and may lead in the long run to questioning the very concept of the city as something created by humans for humans (Cugurullo, 2021). Indeed, while AI is profoundly changing the ways in which cities are planned and managed (Batty, 2023; Son et al., 2023), even the very composition of the citizenry is affected by these logics: in experimental settings such as the Neom project in Saudi Arabia a robot may even become a full citizen (NEOM: Made to Change, n.d.). These poorly considered risks could lead to significant changes in what we mean by city, thereby challenging its very definition.

Towards a non-modern theory of design

As we have seen by analysing the literature on smart and eco-cities, the simple application of technology to increase the efficiency of our cities does not seem to be enough in the Anthropocene (Cugurullo, 2021). Some systemic changes are needed in the way the habitability of our cities is thought about (Elmqvist et al., 2019); a new design theory seems necessary to try to assemble technology and urban space together with the goal of sustainability (Yigitcanlar, 2018). Through Latour’s thinking, we have realised that we need to change the way we look at AI by abandoning the moderns’ concepts of science and nature and going beyond the perspective of matters of fact. According to the French philosopher, the concept of design has five specific principles concerning a new theory of action that can be useful, in the context of this paper, to conceptualise the relationship between urban AI and sustainability.

The first two principles visibly contrast with contemporary trends in AI urbanism. The first relates to humility, that is the willingness not to be always foundational and revolutionary (Latour, 2008). The design of urban AI does not have to follow the path of radical disruption, which is evident for instance in AI urbanism projects such as the linear city The Line in the Neom project in Saudi Arabia, which aims to be «a revolution in urban living». The very slogan of the Neom project is «made to change» (NEOM: Made to Change, n.d.; THE LINE: a revolution in urban living n.d.) to signify a radical break with the past all within that concept of modernity that Latour intends to overcome and that in contemporary urbanism we can define as transurbanism (Cugurullo, 2021), that is, the idea that technology will produce an autonomous solution to urban problems. The great power of AI and the great fragility of Gaia would suggest, instead, an experimentalism of a different kind (Bulkeley, 2021). A diffuse and small-scale experimentalism that could test the actual functioning of urban AIs in the ecosystems in which it fits. This approach would avoid the already highlighted risk of being trapped in environmentally expensive and socially damaging infrastructures (Robbins & Van Wynsberghe, 2022). In this light, the attention to limits highlighted both in the history of urban ecology (Endlicher, 2007) and in Latour’s reflection (Latour & Schultz, 2023) is extremely relevant. Being revolutionary and foundational might have been a reasonable approach in the face of Galileo’s inert nature capable of absorbing every shock, but it appears to be a suicidal strategy in the magmatic context of Gaia.

The second characteristic is closely linked to the first one and involves attention to detail. The idea is to have an almost craftsman-like attention to detail in design and not to proceed without considering the implications of actions or thinking that these will only be addressed at a later stage (Latour, 2008). In the design of sustainable urban AIs, therefore, it is key to first understand and publicise the impact of these technologies on the various collectives that populate the city, namely how the placement of robots, AVs or software agents can have costs that are distributed differently in the urban space (between centres and suburbs, between different ethnic communities, between different social classes, between people of different ethical orientations, between different ecosystems) (Bulkeley, 2021). Furthermore, a sustainable and detail-oriented urban AI cannot fail to incorporate within itself an indication of the environmental cost (materials, energy, emissions) associated with its assembly, training and deployment to enable citizens and policy makers to make an informed assessment of its use (Van Wynsberghe, 2021).

The third characteristic concerns the focus on purpose (Latour, 2008). A sustainable urban AI must move away from the logic of efficiency as a fundamental purpose (Hodson & Marvin, 2010; Ahvenniemi et al., 2017; Yigitcanlar, 2018; Mora et al., 2021). In fact, efficiency is what we might contradictorily define as an instrumental purpose: something is efficient with respect to a purpose and not in itself, and we must always ask ourselves whose benefit a technology is efficient for. A sustainable urban AI must emerge from the goals discussed by the collectives that populate the city and arise from that dialogue between science and community that we examined in the previous section (Latour, 2017; Turnhout et al., 2020). Scientific reflection and technological solutions must arise from the concrete interests and needs of communities, overcoming a modern conception of science. The fourth characteristic concerns the fact that design is always re-design (Latour, 2008). That is, the design of urban AI is always situated in a context of humans and non-humans with specific needs. The critical literature on AI urbanism has already highlighted how the application of urban AI takes little account of contexts (Bratton, 2021) and how it is often believed that AIs should be the main intelligences in the cities of the future (Lynch & Del Casino, 2020), that is, the ones capable of coordinating the others. It has also been pointed out that this mindset contradicts any claim to sustainability (Palmini & Cugurullo, 2023). Sustainable urban AIs must first and foremost be put at the service of preserving the habitability conditions of the various collectives by dialoguing with the natural ecosystems that are the foundation of urban life. They must also fit into the relationships between intelligences (human and non-human) in order to foster cooperative cohabitation while respecting specific differences. Situating urban AI in Gaia means putting it at the service of habitability and differences and not of efficiency and homologation. The last characteristic concerns the importance of politics, the idea that one should always discuss whether design is right or wrong, suitable or unsuitable for a certain context. Following Latour «no designer will be allowed to hide behind the old protection of matters of fact. No designer will be able to claim: “I am just stating what exists”, or “I am simply drawing the consequences of the laws of nature”, or “I am simply reading the bottom line”»(Latour,2008). Designing a sustainable urban AI therefore means abandoning the problematic concept of progress that animated moderns in thinking both AI (Coeckelbergh, 2022) and urban AI (Cugurullo, 2021). This design culture must not only ask how AI can change the city but also how the urban ontology - made of differences, clashes, cooperations and balances - can change the very logic of AI.

The suggestion that can be made to design sustainable urban AI through Latour is to start seeing it as a matter of concern. With this term, the French philosopher designates the new type of objects that we have to deal with in this time marked by a global climate crisis. These new objects have no clear boundaries but must be defined in relation to the environment in which they are located; their material, scientific and technological production has to be made visible; they must be not independent of their implications and impacts but determined by them and must by definition acknowledge the possible long-term risks associated with their use (Latour, 2004). According to Latour, as we have seen, in order to establish a true political ecology, it is necessary to question the concepts of modernity, science and nature that have accompanied us so far and to change our way of understanding objects - from matters of fact to matters of concern - and to change them through a new design theory. We believe that sustainable urban AI design needs this reflection to break out of the impasse created by the juxtaposition of smart and eco urbanism. In an urban reality in crisis that needs to be redesigned, an urban planning that merely repeats the paradigms of the past seems to be ineffective and, worst, harmful. The era of AI and the Anthropocene demands a radical reflection on the way we inhabit the world, and Bruno Latour’s philosophy certainly points a way forward in this regard.

Conclusion

This paper has highlighted how contemporary urban planning is shaping the relationship between AI urbanism and sustainability. The foundations of this relationship – namely the juxtaposition of smart and eco urbanism – have been questioned by reporting empirical evidence and theoretical aporias that illustrate a situation that is far from being frictionless. The concepts of modernity, science and nature emerged as the focal points of these difficulties and, through the philosophy of Bruno Latour, a reconceptualization of these terms was undertaken. By critically examining these three concepts, it has been possible to systematise some important aspects of the debate on the sustainability of urban AI. Namely, the modern soul of the design culture that inspires AI urbanism (Palmini & Cugurullo, 2023; Cugurullo, 2021; Duarte & Álvarez, 2019), the need to consider science and technology as internal dimensions of social and urban dynamics rather than as prescriptive and rational principles (Karvonen et al., 2021; Mora et al., 2021; Turnhout et al., 2013), and the idea of considering nature not as a compact whole that acts as a backdrop to human action, but as an active and multiple terrain with which to dialogue (Elmqvist et al., 2021; Pickett et al., 2016; Wu, 2014). Such a conceptual operation was undertaken not only to systematise certain concepts present in the critical literature on AI urbanism, but above all to highlight how these elements are clues that should lead to a structural rethinking of modern Western design culture, rather than secondary implications of the application of a specific AI technology.

Finally, in the last section, these reflections resulted in an application of Latour’s design philosophy to the relationship between urban AI and sustainability, highlighting the advantages that the principles described by the French philosopher can bring to this specific field. The move from matter of fact to matter of concern proved to be a useful conceptual scheme to highlight some issues related to AI and AI urbanism that resonate with the existing critical literature in urban studies, urban political ecology and philosophy of science: (1) the urgency of seeing urban AI as an element of further complexity in the urban system, rather than a way of ordering it (Bratton, 2021; Lynch & Del Casino, 2020); (2) the need to make explicit the environmental costs of the production, development and application of this technology (Brevini, 2021; Van Wynsberghe, 2021); (3) the importance of considering social, ethical and environmental implications and impacts in the very definition of a given technological object (Coeckelbergh, 2021; Crawford, 2021); (4) the risk of being too dependent on AI for the functioning of the city (Robbins & Van Wynsberghe, 2022) and that of profound changes in what we mean by the urban and by citizenship (Cugurullo, 2021). Drawing on this consideration, the five principles of design action – humility, attention to details, focus on purpose, re-design and politics of design – formalised by Latour have been used to generate a proactive turn to the epistemological shift through which the French philosopher proposes to overcome modernity. These principles, which treat their object as a matter of concern, can be useful in modifying the design culture of AI urbanism. Therefore, the decision to use Latour’s philosophy as a logical scheme to bring together the existing criticisms and future perspectives on the relationship between urban AI and sustainability is motivated by two elements. Firstly, the concepts of modernity, science and nature – which constitute the main theoretical reasons for the friction between smart and eco urbanism – are at the centre of Latour’s reflection, and he has proposed an original and radical shift in their meaning. Secondly, unlike many other philosophers, Latour has identified design as a necessary mode of action in the Anthropocene. This makes his work useful for interdisciplinary studies and activities that have this practice at their core.

This paper primarily has sought to demonstrate the need for a relationship between philosophy and urban studies with regard to the topics addressed. For if it is true that philosophy risks becoming an empty exercise in style if it abstracts too much from concrete problems, it is equally true that the weight of philosophical concepts underlying urban planning is decisive for its concrete applications. With regard to the theme examined in this paper, the distinction between theory and practice has appeared in its abstractness. Indeed, the problematic relationship between AI urbanism and sustainability has led to a rethinking of the fundamental philosophical categories of modernity, showing how this is relevant to concrete urban planning practices. This paper has not dealt with single design practices or specific case studies, but has aimed to impact the debate regarding the principles and values that should inform them in the future. The arguments produced are intended to have an impact on design culture, which needs to be radically rethought to address the challenges raised by technological progress and climate change. Far from wanting to produce strange hybrids such as philosopher-designers, the aim here is to stimulate a necessary transdisciplinary discussion, leading to collaborations whereby the philosophy of the city and urban theory can aid architects, urban planners and policy makers in the design of sustainable urban AIs. Following Latour for one last time, we can state that in these dangerous but interesting times the limits of disciplinary fields must be treated with agility, producing assemblages of intelligences and competences capable of questioning the new ways of living that Gaia requires.