Artificial Intelligence and Urban Planning

This Article examines how Italy’s turn to digital government and data-driven administration is remaking land-use governance. It distinguishes back-office digitization that leaves human judgment intact from algorithmic governance that reshapes how agencies establish facts and reach outcomes. Against the NRRP and new national data platforms, it shows how planning offices are beginning to treat AI tools and “urban digital twins” as standard planning infrastructure and as public digital resources subject to open-government and data-protection constraints. It then analyzes AI-supported code enforcement, focusing on the national database on unlawful construction, and flags recurring problems: unreliable data, privacy exposure, weak human review, and uncertain accountability. The Article argues that black-box systems and expertise gaps can push residents to the margins of planning, and it calls for participation and accountability rules redesigned for AI-assisted governance.