Smart Cities

About

Building useful computational tools for cities requires understanding how cities actually work — socially, spatially, and politically. A significant part of our research is therefore dedicated to studying urban life, not just modeling it.

Our urban studies work examines several interconnected themes: the governance implications of smart city technologies; the social and spatial dynamics of urban renewal in Israel, including displacement, densification, and uneven benefit distribution; the spatial organization of religious and minority communities; and the political economy of planning institutions.

This research is not a detour from our computational work — it is a foundation for it. Empirical knowledge of urban processes helps us identify where AI tools are needed, what they should be designed to do, and what risks they need to manage. It also helps us evaluate whether the tools we build reflect the complexity and equity concerns that matter in real planning practice.