AI's Role in Our Urban Future

One key concern raised in the video is the notion of uncontrolled development, "as impoverishment, slums and shantytowns rapidly expand alongside modern high-rises". Dharavi in Maharashtra India, Neza-Chalco-Itza in Mexico City and Kibera in Nairobi are prominent examples of such developments. However such massive developments do not happen overnight and Ilievski suggests that machine learning models can "capture the patterns of urban change driven by a diverse set of context factors" like economic growth, demographics changes, proximity, and neighborhood conditions. Ilievski demonstrates that machine learning can accurately predict how land use evolves over time across categories like undeveloped, main street, peripheral street, industry, house, education, park, etc.