Beyond Inclusive Smart Cities: Toward Collective Urban Intelligence
A special issue of Smart Cities (ISSN 2624-6511). This special issue belongs to the section "Artificial Intelligence and LLM Agents for Data-Driven Decisions in Smart Cities".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 115
Special Issue Editors
Interests: systemic urban design and planning methodology; digitally supported urban design and planning methodology; more-then-human participatory design methodology; digitally enabled healthy lifestyle and healthy city design; socio-spatial and urban governance dynamics; urban commons; inclusive; sustainable and resilient cities
Interests: AI-driven urban design and planning; digital participation and citizen data analytics; urban informatics and digital twins; digital decision support systems; data-driven and evidence-based design methodologies; participatory and co-design processes; sustainable, healthy, and inclusive urban environments
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Inclusive Smart Cities have emerged as a critical framework for making urban development more equitable, adaptive and responsive in an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, urban computing, digital twins, platform infrastructures and data-driven governance systems. Yet, existing approaches often remain fragmented, treating technological innovation, social inclusion, ecological sustainability, public health and urban governance as separate domains. This Special Issue argues for a more integrated perspective in which computational technologies, collective agency and urban systems are understood as fundamentally interconnected dimensions of future cities.
Under the theme "Beyond Inclusive Smart Cities: Toward Collective Urban Intelligence", this Special Issue explores how urban intelligence can emerge through the interaction of human actors, digital systems, institutions, infrastructures, environmental processes and urban data ecosystems, positioning cities as interconnected and more-than-human urban systems. In this perspective, AI systems, machine-learning models, urban sensing technologies, digital platforms and data infrastructures are not approached merely as technical tools but as active components shaping urban governance, participation, spatial organisation and everyday urban life.
At the same time, the issue emphasises that technological systems cannot be separated from questions of ownership, accessibility, participation, public wellbeing and democratic governance. Particular attention is given to digital urban commons, where urban data, platforms and digital infrastructures are collectively governed as shared urban resources. Rather than reinforcing centralised technological control, this perspective explores how computational systems, participatory processes and collective governance models can support adaptive urban management, citizen empowerment, healthier urban environments and more resilient forms of urban development. At its core, this perspective emphasises care, reciprocity and the long-term co-evolution of urban systems across human, environmental and technological dimensions. The issue also encourages critical reflections on algorithmic governance, data ownership, transparency, bias and accountability within emerging urban intelligence systems.
By connecting computational urbanism with participation, governance, sustainability transitions and public wellbeing, this Special Issue advances the idea of Collective Urban Intelligence as a framework in which technological innovation and social transformation are developed together rather than treated as separate domains.
Prof. Pieter van Wesemael
Dr. Cem Ataman
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Smart Cities is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- inclusive smart cities
- collective urban intelligence
- computational urbanism
- urban informatics
- artificial intelligence
- machine learning
- urban data analytics
- digital twins
- participatory planning
- digital participation
- digital urban commons
- collective governance
- systems thinking
- inclusive complex systems
- sustainability
- resilience
- more-than-human urban systems
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