Let me chook mouth in this 'A.I. taking people's jobs' matter too.

First of all, I am aware that when it comes to AI, the user determines the outcomes.
And environmental services/practice professionals are knowledgeable and skilled enough to manage AI to achieve their outcomes.

In a post from 2024 too, I highlighted how AI can improve city planning systems, citing its efficiency at processing patterns, data and trends faster, more reliably, and at scale.
Yet, naturally, like every muilii-functional tool, we want to use it for more.

So, what are the implications and limits of AI in our pursuit of optimal efficiency within our cities.


While I don't doubt that AI makes everyone's jobs easier, I think AI does not have the range, or the depth for anything as complex as city planning.

So, here’s the part I think most of the “Let AI optimize our cities.” miss…

Cities are not just physical systems.
They are social, economic, and by nature, very unpredictable.


Think how master plans serve to guide development.
Like rules in a football game, but only to control, not decide outcomes.
Same with cities.
The game is still decided by the (social, economic & physical) players.

You can optimize roads, density, utilities, but you can’t “optimize” how people live, earn, adapt, and interact.

This is where I believe AI will struggle.

That it works excellently well with patterns based on averages…
When, ironically, cities don’t exist in averages. But rather in “differences.”
Different incomes, different behaviours, different realities. All existing in the same space, creating different outcomes for different people.


So, should city planning choose to rely too heavily on AI’s averaged data for averaged outcomes…

It will only continue to do what we've been doing, in the same way we've been planning for an “efficient” version of the city that may never exist.
In:
👉 Uniform zoning.
👉 Blanket approval standards
👉 Mega reactionary projects with disconnected outcomes.

All to make cities more efficient.

And in this pursuit of optimum efficiency, we risk eliminating the very thing that makes them work.
That “messy,” layered, sometimes chaotic mix of activity.
… The hustle & bustle, the rhythm, and the vibes… The vitality, the ‘life’ that makes a city a city.

Which to AI, could be diagnosed as a flaw, and thus eliminated.
Turning the city into a picture-perfect, but lifeless & sterile city.


So maybe the goal shouldn't be perfect optimization.
And 'AI' remains humble enough to understand its limitations for human contexts.

Maybe it’s agility, and guided flexibility, where:
👉 The objective is not picture-perfect streets,
👉 AI supports decisions,
👉 Data informs direction,
👉 But human realities shape outcomes.

I am certain that cities won’t be built by data alone, or by the “messy vitality” alone, or by perfect-looking streets. But by how well we combine all of them to balance efficiency with reality.