TY - CHAP

T1 - AI and urban governance: from the perils of smart cities to Amazon Inc. urbanism

AU - Antenucci, Ilia

AU - Meissner, Fran

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © Editors and Contributors Severally 2024.

PY - 2024/6/21

Y1 - 2024/6/21

N2 - The extensive deployment of commercial AITs is increasingly shaping urban environments and what was previously the realm of urban planning and governance. We highlight the importance of cities as testing grounds for proprietary and commercial AITs and the socio-political implications of such processes amidst tensions between the flattening gaze of the software and the multiple, irreducible realities of the city. To describe how AITs become part of urban planning and policies, we show how the AI promise of delivering better governance quickly turned into controversial socio-political effects. These include lack of transparency and democratic oversight, technocratic solutionism, and encoding of racial, gender, and class discrimination in algorithmic systems. We then draw on Amazon as a case study to illustrate how powerful commercial AITs are ever more frequently controlling operations crucial to urban life, such as logistics and security, and how they are thus affecting how cities function and are governed.

AB - The extensive deployment of commercial AITs is increasingly shaping urban environments and what was previously the realm of urban planning and governance. We highlight the importance of cities as testing grounds for proprietary and commercial AITs and the socio-political implications of such processes amidst tensions between the flattening gaze of the software and the multiple, irreducible realities of the city. To describe how AITs become part of urban planning and policies, we show how the AI promise of delivering better governance quickly turned into controversial socio-political effects. These include lack of transparency and democratic oversight, technocratic solutionism, and encoding of racial, gender, and class discrimination in algorithmic systems. We then draw on Amazon as a case study to illustrate how powerful commercial AITs are ever more frequently controlling operations crucial to urban life, such as logistics and security, and how they are thus affecting how cities function and are governed.

KW - AIT

KW - Amazon AI

KW - Logistics

KW - Mainstreaming

KW - Security

KW - Urban planning

KW - Politics

KW - Sociology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85207585039&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.4337/9781803922171.00040

DO - 10.4337/9781803922171.00040

M3 - Chapter

SN - 978 1 80392 216 4

T3 - Handbooks on Research on Public Policy

SP - 423

EP - 434

BT - Handbook on Public Policy and Artificial Intelligence

A2 - Paul, Regine

A2 - Carmel, Emma

A2 - Cobbe, Jennifer

PB - Edward Elgar Publishing

ER -