At today’s AI and Cities: An International Forum for Innovation and Collaboration, Shin Koseki, Assistant Professor at the University of Montreal and Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape, presented Évadia+, a groundbreaking AI-driven platform for inclusive urban participation. The project exemplifies how artificial intelligence can be co-designed with communities to strengthen civic engagement, ensure transparency, and build more equitable urban futures. Drawing from real-world applications in Montreal, the tool allows citizens to track how their input shapes development projects—redefining public consultation through weighted synthesis, source traceability, and multimodal participation.
Koseki’s presentation aligned closely with the forum’s overarching goals: to explore the transformative potential of AI in urban development while addressing ethical, social, and governance challenges. The Evadia+ project stands out as an innovative contribution to the forum’s key themes, particularly in participatory planning, civic engagement, and AI governance. By embedding equity and inclusion into the AI lifecycle itself—from framing to evaluation—the project demonstrates how AI can be mobilized to support, rather than erode, democratic processes in urban governance.
👉🏽The inaugural Forum, held online from May 9–10, 2025, convened researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and industry leaders from across the globe to build alliances for responsible AI deployment in cities. Organized to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and share best practices, the Forum featured research at the intersection of urban planning, AI design, ethics, and public engagement. Presentations like Koseki’s underscored the need for cities to not only adopt AI technologies, but to shape them through inclusive, community-centered processes that reflect the complexities and aspirations of urban life.