Be part of the transition towards brighter, better urban landscapes

As the semester comes to an end, the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape wishes you a wonderful holiday season!

Frédérique Roy, a master’s student in urban planning and collaborator with the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape, presented her research at the IDES Annual Conference “Resistance and Agency in the Digital Society: Beyond Literacy, Transparency, and Risk Assessment”, at the University of Lausanne.

Rashid Mushkani is the award recipient of the 3rd edition of the Faculty “Jeunes chercheurs, jeunes chercheuses : votre voix dans l’espace public.” competition. This distinction includes a $10,000 grant to support the dissemination of his research to the general public and policymakers over the coming year.

Hosted by Leandry Jieutsa and Roxane Kasprzyk, this episode titled
“Rethinking the City Through Universal Design” features Pierre-Étienne Gendron-Landry, Head of Société Logique, as a guest.

Episode 2 is now live! For this episode, “Designing the City - Between Social and Digital”, Leandry Jieutsa welcomes Shin Koseki, Director and Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape, as well as Assistant Professor at the School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Montreal. His work focuses on designing responsible artificial intelligence systems for cities.

We invite you to discover Episode 1: “AI: Between Science and Imagination”, featuring Hugo Bérard, postdoctoral researcher at the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape.
He explores the tools of artificial intelligence in planning… but not only!

Congrats to Eddy !

The UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape is launching its podcast series!

On October 22, 2025, the SOUR Podcast featured Rashid Mushkani (Lecturer, Université de Montréal; Researcher, Mila—Québec AI Institute) for a deep dive into co‑produced and public AI for cities. The conversation explores participatory datasets, pluralistic alignment, and governance grounded in data rights and data sovereignty—concrete ways to ensure AI reflects the values of the people it affects, rather than overwriting local knowledge.

At the end of October, Eddy Nono presented a poster titled “AI for Urban Mobility: The Role of Citizen Participation” at the IVADO Digital Futures event.

On November 26, the closing conference of the EVADIA+ and CAIAG projects will take place, under the theme:
“AI, Public Space and Citizen Participation.”

Looking Back at the International Conference “Climate Action and Transitions: Perspectives from Québec and France”

A new member of the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape and a Master’s student in Urban Planning, Jennifer is conducting her research under the supervision of Shin Koseki. Her work focuses on the social impacts of artificial intelligence in citizen participation processes related to urban planning.

Adèle Kremer, a UNESCO Chair Alumni graduate student (2022–2025), has joined the prestigious ETH joint Master of Advanced Studies in Urban and Territorial Design (MAS UTD) at ETH/EPFL.. The one-year program, led and conceived by Paola Viganò and Milica Topalovic, “engages with notions of transformation, reuse, circularity, regeneration, reparation, and transition of habitats and ecologies to deploy the urban and territorial project as a means to explore common epistemic horizons and new biopolitical paradigms, and as a crucial field of knowledge production across scales.“

New member of the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape!

Dr. Shin Koseki, Professor at the Université de Montréal and holder of the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape, publishes a new article in the latest issue of Urbanité, the magazine of the Ordre des urbanistes du Québec. Known for his work on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) in cities, Dr. Koseki reflects on how urban planners can help ensure that AI technologies serve democratic, inclusive, and ecological goals rather than amplify social or environmental risks.

The UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape is proud to announce the publication of a new chapter by Aleksandra Mostovaja and Shin Koseki in the forthcoming volume … but, who are we building for?, published by Building Diversity and the Danish Architectural Press. This second book by Building Diversity brings together more than thirty international contributions that critically reflect on inclusivity, equity, and belonging in architecture and the built environment.

The IVADO consortium on research on AI has confirmed the appointment of Professor Shin Koseki, holder of the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape at the Université de Montréal, as an IVADO Researcher. This five-year affiliation integrates him into a leading scientific community bringing together researchers in artificial intelligence, data science, and optimization.

The Evadia+ team of the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape had the pleasure of leading the AI Freskworkshop, proposed by Frédérique Roy and Hugo Berard during a collaborative session.

In Habitat International (Vol. 164, Oct 2025), Rashid Mushkani and Shin Koseki present Street Review, a participatory method that blends interviews, focus groups, and a structured image-rating exercise to assess 20 Montréal streets (60 vantage points) across four criteria: Accessibility, Inclusivity, Aesthetics, Practicality.

Happy back-to-school season to all!

Applause for Andreanne Bernard!

Rashid Mushkani (UdeM, Mila) and his co-authors, Shravan Nayak, Hugo Berard, Allison Cohen, Shin Koseki, Hadrien Bertrand presented LIVS (Local Intersectional Visual Spaces) at the ICML 2025 (International Conference on Machine Learning) in Vancouver.

We are pleased to share our latest study, “Public perceptions of Montréal’s streets: Implications for inclusive public space making and management”, published in the Journal of Urban Management and co-authored by Rashid Mushkani, Hugo Bérard, Shin Koseki (Université de Montréal, Mila – Quebec AI Institute) and Toumadher Ammar (Université de Montréal).

Eddy Nono, a master’s student in Environment and Sustainable Development (specializing in planning), has been awarded the research scholarship of Regroupement 5 – Éthique, EDI et engagement autochtone as part of IVADO’s IAR 3 program.

After completing an internship at the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape last year and earning her bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, Aleksandra Mostovaja is now continuing her academic journey at the Urban School of Sciences Po Paris, within the master’s program Governing the Large Metropolis.

Adele Kremer, master’s student in Urban Landscape and Planning at the Faculty of Environmental Design at the Université de Montréal, received a distinction for her master’s thesis titled: “Perceptions and Experiences of Women Experiencing Homelessness in Montreal’s Public Spaces.” Supervised by Shin Koseki, her work explores crucial social and spatial issues.

Rashid Mushkani, PhD student at the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape, won the third prize for his presentation “Locked Out by Design” during the grand finale of Mila’s Speed Science contest on June 5, 2025.

Eddy Damaris, as a student member of OBVIA, presented the core issue of his research during the “Fresque de la relève” session.

Joignez-vous à nous le 7 juillet prochain pour la première Fresque critique de l’IA ouverte au public!