Work

Framing artificial intelligence as a policy instrument in urban climate action: Practitioners' perspectives from Paris

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Urban practitioners increasingly integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into tasks related to the implementation of climate action. Research identified potential AI applications and traced implementation processes, yet it remains understudied how practitioners introduce AI and how AI systems change workflows and decision hierarchies in urban climate action. Treating AI as a policy instrument, this study examines the city of Paris through semi-structured interviews and documents from grey literature. We show that AI currently produces incremental shifts in tasks related to climate action, for example, in maintenance of infrastructure, urban planning and building regulation. These shifts in practice do not replace, but position urban practitioners as curators of AI systems, responsible for including socio-technical risk assessment and translation to deliberative formats. We also document how practitioners mediate AI’s integration into urban climate action through technocratic, moral, and political logics of action, contrasted with their doubts about the usefulness of AI. Doubts include, for instance, that AI risks depoliticizing urban climate action. By assessing AI as a socio-technical policy instrument rather than a neutral tool, our study unpacks both technical operational utility and its symbolic values, including tensions in between, such as complexity-handling versus oversimplification, and acceleration versus accountability. We argue that urban practitioners must critically reflect on their expectations towards AI systems and engage with fundamental concerns to reduce tension. Based on our findings, we created a checklist for urban practitioners who engage with AI in climate action and aim to operationalize democratic AI governance as a means to reduce adverse consequences.

Source: Cities

DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2026.107414

Authors: Marie Josefine Hintz, Lynn H. Kaack, Felix Creutzig, Tommaso Vitale