This book imagines the future of cities in a time of automation, complexity, and artificial intelligence. It makes the case that today's urgent problems cannot be solved by the conventional "smart city" model, which is centered on sensors, data, and optimization. It suggests agentic cities instead, which are anticipatory, self-learning, and adaptive systems that work as collaborators rather than passive instruments to influence societal change. The book examines how AI might change important urban systems, such as mobility, energy, housing, and health, turning them from reactive services to predictive, dynamic ecosystems. It cites instances that anticipate disasters and increase group capacity, such as distributed energy networks, anticipatory healthcare, and dynamic social infrastructure.
Beyond technology, it explores the moral and political ramifications of agency, addressing problems such as digital inequality and algorithmic unfairness. It demands a new social compact between individuals, organizations, and intelligent systems as well as openness, explainability, and participatory governance. Ultimately, the book imagines the city as a cooperative cognitive ecosystem where machine intelligence, institutional knowledge, and human creativity combine to create cities that develop and change alongside us in order to achieve justice, resilience, and sustainability.

Prof. Ali CHESHMEHZANGI is Head of the School of Architecture, Design and Planning and Professor at the University of Queensland (UQ), Brisbane, Australia. He is also Adjunct Professor at Hunan University, Changsha, China. He is among the top 20 global scholars in the urban sustainability research area, as well as the top 2% field leader globally since 2021. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Urban Sustainability Book Series with Springer Nature. He is Committee Member of the 2032 Games in Brisbane for Legacy and Growth sub-committee, as well as Expert Member of the Olympics and Paralympic Games at UQ. More recently, he has coined the concept of “Advanced City,” a decade-long project that is now concluded.

With a career spanning over two decades, he has made significant contributions to the academic and professional communities, with a focus on sustainable and environmentally conscious design.