Cornell Researchers Analyze Major Trends in Urban Tech

A team of researchers at Cornell Tech, Cornell University's tech-focused research campus, has developed a forecast for how technologies like artificial intelligence could shape cities in the coming decade. After a year of work, the team released its first "Horizon Scan" report last week to discuss the potential risks and applications of recent advancements in urban tech. The forecast report predicts areas where the most radical and rapid changes in urban tech could take place, touching on topics such as "supercharged" smart city infrastructure, the use of sustainable building materials and machine learning in the public sector, among other areas of interest. The project was led by Anthony Townsend, urbanist in residence at the Jacobs Urban Tech Hub at Cornell Tech, who has spent years studying tech-related issues like the digital divide. He said the goal of the Horizon Scan was to create a road map "to make better decisions about applied research" in urban tech. Townsend said the need to weigh potential pros and cons of machine learning's applications in the public sector is a recurring factor in the report.