Artificial intelligence could help plan cities, but there are downsidesBy Ahmed YussufTopic:Artificial Intelligence14h ago14 hours agoMon 9 Jun 2025 at 9:00amSome experts say AI adoption in planning improves productivity but requires careful regulation and human oversight to mitigate risks.(ABC Radio Brisbane: Kenji Sato)In short:New peer-reviewed research has found artificial intelligence could boost productivity in urban planning by automating tasks such as data analysis and report drafting.Some experts warn AI may lead to job losses and biased decision-making, requiring guardrails and human oversight in complex planning issues.What's next?There are calls for the Commonwealth to introduce AI regulation to balance innovation and safeguard against biases.Artificial intelligence could be the "perfect" tool for planning the cities of the future and increasing productivity, but experts say it could come at a price.New peer-reviewed research published inNature Citieshas found large language models could assist urban planners in tasks, from acting as a database for local data and planning knowledge to drafting reports.Some experts said while the adoption of the new technology could increase productivity in urban planning, some jobs could be lost.Lead author Dr Xinyu Fu, a researcher in urban planning from the University of Waikato, explored how LLMs such as OpenAI's ChatGPT could be used in urban planning.When working on the research, Dr Fu spoke to several planners about their workflow, and found a lot of time was spent on administrative tasks.Those included interpreting policy documents, assessing development and analysing public submissions."They spend a lot of time on doing those [administrative tasks], and a lot of those tasks can be augmented by AI," Dr Fu said.He pointed to arecent pilotproject with the Hamilton City Council in New Zealand. The local council tested how a LLM could be used to analyse thousands of public submissions on planning proposals to summarise them.It's a task that can take a human months to complete, according to Dr Fu."We experimented with the AI, which is OpenAI's GPT-4. We use that to replicate what planners are doing," he said."It did a really good job with finding similar summaries and finding similar findings from if they were doing it manually, which will only use about $US15 and a few hours."Before LLMs, tools were very limited. Now, we can do in hours what used to take weeks or even months."AI can make urban planning less reactive, expert saysThe Australian government has flagged the need to address productivity, with Treasurer Jim Chalmersspotlighting it as the main economic issuein this term of government.Arecent reportfrom the Productivity Commission found that Australians were working in record numbers and for increasingly long hours, which was contributing to a productivity slump.Loading YouTube contentIt's why Dr Fu doesn't see the adoption of AI in urban planning as a replacement tool for human planners but as a way to ensure planners had time to focus on other more important elements to their work."[Planners] are becoming quite reactive. When policy changes come, they react to that. When disasters happen, they react to that," he said."If we can reduce that pressure, they can focus more on engaging with communities and creating long-term strategies."Australia's peak industry body for urban planning said artificial intelligence wasamong the four drivers of change for planners.The others included climate change, population and the political and social landscape.Planning Institute of Australia's (PIA) Nicole Bennetts, who is a registered planner with more than a decade of experience, said the peak body had already taken steps toprovide a guidance notefor planners in the country.Ms Bennetts said AI could help planners with some low-risk tasks, such as development assessments, when only a yes or no conclusion was required."But there are guardrails that we do need to set up, because planning decisions are often not just a simple yes and no," she said."There are often more subjective decisions that need to be made, which requires kind of human intervention."AI is already being used within urban planningThe PIA prepared the guidance note so that planners could understand what the opportunities were with AI but also the risks.LLMs often have a bias, according to Ms Bennetts.She said the PIA found that if all the past decisions of a local council or a state government were fed into an AI chatbot to make a future decision it would not have the new climate change projections within it."So how do you manage those risks where previous decisions might not reflect what your future decisions want to be,"she said."It's easy where there's clear rules, but where it's a more subjective or trade off discussion, that's where it can get more challenging."The adoption of AI in planning was already happening in Australia, Ms Bennetts said.She pointed to Victoria's Yarra Ranges Council preparing to use anAI tool to do development assessmentsand Queensland's Sunshine Coast Regional Council is testingAI avatar technology at City Hallto answer ratepayers' questions on issues from damaged bins to pet registration."Planners are leading [the adoption of AI] because we want to see planning being able to be as easy for customers to use as possible," she said.Job losses may happen despite increased productivityProfessor Toby Walsh, who is the Chief Scientist at University of New South Wales AI Institute, said the adoption of AI in urban planning might mean fewer jobs but it doesn't need to.He described the use of AI in the study as a "perfect application" for the technology.Professor Toby Walsh says the Commonwealth must come up with AI regulation that fits the country and feels Australian.(Supplied: TU Berlin/Press/Christian Kielmann)Australia is currently facing a shortage of planners,according to the PIA."I think this is a good example of how we shouldn't just be thinking about doing the same work with less people, because we've automated some of it,"he said."But actually thinking about whether we can lift our game, whether we can use it to be more responsive to the public, to take into account more input from them that we wouldn't have been able to do before we had these AI tools available."It's why Professor Walsh believes the federal government must take a leading role in regulating the technology, which the Commonwealth have done in other areas such as social media.The European Union passedthe first piece of legislation regulating AIin February, while a US bill isattempting to stop individual statesregulating the technology for at least a decade."We want to come up with something that works for Australia. The best regulation of the digital space seems to be the level of the nation state,"he said."My inclination is that the Australian public is going to be more sympathetic to the sort of approach that is being put out in Europe, as opposed to the very laissez-faire approach that we now seeing happening in the US."