Local governments could deploy AI for good. Here’s how.
Two urban innovation experts lay out the case.
When considering AI’s impact in cities, many residents and government officials envision a dark future of unbridled surveillance, hollowed-out city halls and unaccountable bots calling the shots based on biased training data. We, on the other hand, embrace a much more optimistic vision. With ambitious local leadership, AI, and especially the coming wave of agentic AI, can offer a profound opportunity not only to make government services more efficient but also to transform how cities fulfill their end of the social contract.
As long-time public servants and champions of government innovation at our respective universities, we understand the challenges local governments face, including tight budgets, aging infrastructure and dissatisfied residents accustomed to the speed of Amazon and personalization of Spotify. Most cities still run on a century-old operating system built on bureaucracy, paper files, agency silos and rigid hierarchy. Agentic AI offers a unique opportunity to redesign how cities work, a model we call the “Agentic City.”