Not a smarter city. A different city.
The Aified City of 2040
A Structural Imagination of Real-Time Urban Coordination
By David Rajan
The Aified City of 2040 is not a smarter city—it is a different city. Roads, buildings, delivery fleets, public transport, and machine agents begin to coordinate in real time, sensing, predicting, pricing, and allocating access before humans even ask. Blending sharp analysis with civic imagination, David Rajan explores both the promise and the peril of real-time urban intelligence—asking who decides what the system optimizes, whether a resident can appeal an algorithm, and whether private platforms become invisible governors—and proposes the essential Urban Compact required to make it legitimate, humane, and worthy of trust.
