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About

Federico Cugurullo is a leading urban scholar whose research sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, smart cities, and sustainable urbanism. His work has fundamentally shaped how academics and planners understand the growing role of AI in shaping 21st-century cities, pioneering the concept of "urban artificial intelligence" — a framework that examines how technologies such as autonomous vehicles, city brains, and urban robots are transforming the governance, materiality, and everyday life of contemporary cities. Cugurullo's most cited contributions include his landmark 2020 papers on the sustainability of AI from an urbanistic perspective (308 citations) and the evolution from smart to autonomous cities (276 citations), both of which established critical theoretical groundwork for an emerging field. His subsequent work on "AI urbanism" (126 citations) further advanced scholarly debate by critically interrogating the post-smart city era, while his 2024 paper actively charts new research directions for urban AI studies. Across these works, Cugurullo consistently adopts an interdisciplinary and critical lens, questioning assumptions of technological progress and centering sustainability and social implications. With over 800 cumulative citations, his scholarship has become essential reading for researchers navigating the rapidly evolving relationship between artificial intelligence and urban life.