Building a People-First, AI-Powered City

ThoughtLab has launched ground-breaking research to analyze the AI strategies, plans, and performance results of 200 cities. The program will provide city leaders with the first playbook and benchmarking model for AI-driven urban transformation. At the same time, it will give urban service providers a unique way to engage city leaders and generate demand for AI services.

Research scope and methodology

ThoughtLab’s team of urban economists and AI specialists will take a mix-methods research approach, including a rigorous benchmarking survey of 200 cities, in-depth interviews and peer interchange with urban decision makers, and robust AI maturity modeling and performance impact analysis.

The program will cover 50 cities in North America, 50 in Europe, 45 in Asia-Pacific, 20 in Latin America, 20 in the Middle East, and 15 in Africa. To facilitate benchmarking, the cities will also vary by population size, income level, economic development, and AI maturity.

To provide the greatest value to city leaders and sponsors, we will examine AI transformation across seven urban domains: (1) government management, (2) safety, security, and resilience, (3) living, health, and education, (4) mobility and transportation, (5) urban infrastructure and utilities, (6) sustainability and environment, and (7) economics and business.

Seven pillars of best practice

To provide actionable insights to urban leaders, the research will also assess the progress of cities across seven areas of AI best practice:

1. Government management and planning

2. Living, health, education, and inclusion

3. Mobility and transportation

4. Urban infrastructure

5. Energy, utilities, and the environment

6. Public safety, security, and resilience

7. Economy and business

This analysis will enable us to create an AI maturity model that will identify urban AI leaders and reveal how their strategies and performance outcomes differ from others. It will also allow us to develop an

evidence-based roadmap for AI transformation, including the AI opportunities, challenges and solutions along a city’s AI journey. Drawing on this data, we will create the first AI City Barometer and Navigator, which will show the AI progress of cities at a glance.

AI solutions in scope

The study will examine the full spectrum of latest AI solutions, including agentic, generative, edge, multimodal, physical AI, and sovereign AI—and their integration with critical urban systems, such as digital twins, cloud platforms, IoT, and data center infrastructure.

Program deliverables 

· Advisory board meetings with urban leaders to shape the research agenda and content deliverables.

· A Tableau database of the full survey results and benchmarks, which can be filtered by city size, location, income level, AI maturity, and other parameters.

· Ten in-depth case studies that will offer concrete examples of AI best practices across urban domains in leading cities around the world.

· A rigorous AI model and benchmarking tool geared just for cities, assessing AI maturity against 7 best-practice areas for 200 cities.

· A sponsor-branded eBook, executive summary, and presentation deck that will provide an evidence-based roadmap to AI urban transformation.

· The AI Navigator, a decision-support platform that will allow urban leaders to explore the research through dynamic charts, tailored analysis, interactive benchmarking, and conversational AI.

Timetable

The research will be conducted over the summer and released on November 3rd at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona. The study will also be made available at no cost to city leaders, businesses, academic institutions, and community organizations worldwide.

Organizations interested in supporting this research initiative are encouraged to connect with ThoughtLab to learn about available sponsorship opportunities. Municipal leaders, public officials and city administrators should also reach out to ThoughtLab to participate in the study and share insights.

Examples of our smart cities research

Building a People-First, AI-Powered City is the sixth initiative in ThoughtLab’s annual series of smart city thought leadership programs. Examples of our previous programs are highlighted below: