June 18, 2025
With federal housing and urban development programs facing potential funding cuts, planners are looking for ways to do more with less. One solution is using artificial intelligence (AI) to help prioritize projects based on need and available resources, and to automate time-consuming manual tasks.
Generative AI — including Google Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT — quickly analyzes vast amounts of data to create text, images, and other content. For planners, AI can serve as a powerful tool to streamline workflows, enhance creativity, and uncover insights that drive decision-making.
Big cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle already use AI for a variety of planning projects, such as analyzing population data to predict housing needs, managing traffic, and improving energy efficiency. Now, planners are looking into how implementing generative AI can assist with reviewing permit applications, conducting site surveys, or supporting other processes.
John Cruz, AICP, a senior housing and land use planner for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Greater Boston, has examined how AI also can be applied to routine planning tasks. One example is using a tool like Fireflies.ai to record and transcribe meeting notes so extra staff members don't have to attend. "If there are going to be cuts made to budgets," Cruz says, "we are going to have to be much more sensitive with our time beyond what we already do today."
Smaller cities embrace AI
Sandy Springs, a city of more than 100,000 residents in Metro Atlanta, has a new AI initiative in the works. Earlier this year, the city brought on Keith McMellen — an expert in business intelligence and cloud computing — as its director of data strategy, analytics, and AI integration. He was hired to help the city modernize core planning functions, such as permitting, zoning, and development reviews.
Earlier this year, Sandy Springs was among the cities that saw the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) briefly rescind its federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), although the pullback was short-lived. Over the past three years, the city has spent about $1.6 million in CDBG funds for sidewalk improvements and other infrastructure projects aimed at improving pedestrian safety and accessibility, especially in under-resourced areas.
Zoning Practice explores how generative AI is currently being used in planning, including how to draft zoning codes.
The long-term availability of these funds is uncertain under the Trump administration, whose fiscal year 2026 budget proposes to eliminate about half of HUD spending, including CDBG. To lessen the impact of these potential cuts, Sandy Springs officials plan to use AI for data analysis. "I view it as an opportunity for the city to gain the most value from what federal funding is still available or from other sources," McMellen says.
By using AI to learn from concerns raised in public comments, online feedback, and city council meetings, McMellen believes themes will emerge that will help the city make the process more inclusive and scalable through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis.
Another benefit of Sandy Springs's digital initiative is how it can support creating key performance indicators (KPIs) during project construction and implementation to monitor budgets and schedules. Once a project is finished, the KPIs can "determine if the project met its goals and communicate transparently through a dashboard or the city's website," McMellen says.
As part of a pilot project, the city's planning staff is examining the use of ChatGPT and other AI tools in their daily work. Michele McIntosh-Ross, the city's planning and zoning manager, says findings will soon be shared with the entire team to determine how to implement AI throughout the department. While consultants typically use AI to develop small area plans and design guidelines, she says, the city will use the technology to update its comprehensive plan.
Sandy Springs also is leveraging AI-derived data for its biannual tree canopy analysis. The method offers cost savings because "we avoid time-consuming traditional pixel classification methods," says Bridget Lawlor, the city's Geographic Information System (GIS) manager. Esri's High Resolution Canopy Height Estimation tool, for example, is a deep learning model that uses high-resolution satellite imagery to obtain accurate measurements of the tree canopy height over vast areas.
Delaware, Ohio, planners use TestFit's Site Solver tool to customize mixed-use building layouts. Image courtesy of TestFit.
Delaware, Ohio, a city of around 45,000 residents just north of Columbus, is also exploring using AI for planning work. Economic Development Director Nic Langford has experimented with a new generative AI design tool from TestFit that can optimize building layouts.
He says he had the tool run through "100 different iterations" for a mixed-use development proposal. By downloading the options, he could easily adjust for setbacks, building height limits, and unit count density. He says the tool does have limitations — the overhead view won't capture surface or subsurface land characteristics — but those are outweighed by the speed and convenience saved by not drawing up building layouts manually.
AI isn't something planners can ignore
Even though the use of AI may seem limitless, there are drawbacks. Nevertheless, it's not something "that we can get away from, not just as planners, but in many areas of life," Cruz says. "We have a committee of folks who have been looking at applications we could potentially use, and there is a lot of skepticism right now on adopting these tools. Part of that is driven by the unknown about something that is so new and becoming so prevalent all over the place."
The ethics of AI use are a major consideration for planners, too, as researchers Thomas Sanchez, AICP, Marc Brenman, and Xinyue Ye point out in a recent article in the Journal of the American Planning Association. "The allure of AI's data processing capabilities, although tempting, should not overshadow the intrinsic human touch, characterized by context and empathy, which has been central to effective urban planning," the authors write. They conclude by reminding readers that "it is the planner's role to use all available facts and proceed in a way that best serves the public."
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