Research seminar with José Lobo, Arizona State University.

Venue: Gellért Campus, J.301 

Language: English 

Introducing The Future of Cities: Innovation, AI, and Sustainability 

Why do large cities operate so differently from others? How do they simultaneously become engines of immense innovation while breeding complex new social challenges? 

Join us for a compelling public lecture by José Lobo, an internationally recognized scholar in urban and sustainability studies at Arizona State University. As a key figure in urban scaling research and a member of the US National Academies’ Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability, Professor Lobo brings a unique perspective that bridges physics, regional science, urban economics, and complexity science. 

In this talk, he will explore the rapidly developing intersections between artificial intelligence, the future of work, and sustainability, offering a unified analytical framework for the future of socioeconomic systems. This is an essential event for fellow scholars and graduate students alike who are interested in the cutting edge of urban science. 

Cities concentrate a growing share of the world’s exposure to climate hazards, but they also generate the knowledge, innovation, and institutional capacity needed to respond. Yet urban science and urban climate adaptation research remain only weakly connected, limiting our ability to understand how adaptation can be aligned with broader goals of urban sustainability, prosperity, and inclusion.  

This talk examines how recent advances in artificial intelligence can help bridge this divide. Beyond improving data integration and prediction, AI can extract insights from massive and heterogeneous streams of information, uncover previously hidden relationships across urban systems, generate and evaluate alternative adaptation pathways, and support decision-making under deep uncertainty.  

These capabilities create new opportunities to identify synergies and trade-offs among climate adaptation, housing, infrastructure, land use, economic development, and social equity at scales ranging from neighborhoods to entire urban systems. At the same time, the growing use of AI raises important questions concerning bias, accountability, unequal access to computational resources, data governance, and environmental costs. The urgent challenge is not simply how to apply AI to cities, but how to deploy these technologies in ways that strengthen urban societies’ capacity to adapt to climate change while advancing more sustainable and equitable forms of urban development. 

See more on the topic, for example, in Lobo, J., Aggarwal, R.M., Alberti, M. et al. Integration of urban science and urban climate adaptation research: opportunities to advance climate action. npj Urban Sustain 3, 32 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-023-00113-0

Introduction 

Professor José Lobois an internationally recognized scholar whose research lies at the intersection of urban science, economic development, technological change, sustainability, and complex systems. A faculty member in Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability, he draws on urban economics, economic geography, complexity science, and quantitative methods to understand how cities generate innovation, productivity, and broader patterns of socioeconomic change. 

Lobo is a leading contributor to urban scaling theory, an interdisciplinary effort to develop a general theory of urbanization that explains recurring patterns in the growth, organization, and performance of cities across different cultures, political systems, and historical periods. A distinctive feature of his scholarship has been sustained collaboration with urban historians and archaeologists to examine whether the mechanisms observed in contemporary cities also characterized ancient urban settlements. By bringing evidence from both modern and ancient cities into a common analytical framework, this work seeks to identify enduring features of urbanization that transcend particular places and eras. 

More recently, Lobo has expanded his research to examine the implications of artificial intelligence and technological change for sustainability and economic development. He was a co-author of the influential PNAS paper Toward Understanding the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Labor and, in 2025, served on the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine planning committee for Artificial Intelligence for Sustainability: Maximizing Benefits for the United States, where he moderated discussions on AI, employment, and workforce transformation. At Arizona State University, he has been asked to coordinate the development of a new institutional initiative linking artificial intelligence and sustainability. 

Lobo is also a member of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability, a leading forum for advancing dialogue among researchers, policymakers, business leaders, and civil-society organizations on sustainability challenges. Throughout his career, he has maintained extensive international research collaborations with scholars in Europe, India, Brazil, Mexico, and China. His collaborations with Chinese researchers have been particularly notable in the areas of sustainable urban development, urbanization, and urban adaptation to climate change, reflecting his longstanding interest in understanding how cities can sustain economic dynamism while responding to environmental change and increasing climate risks. 

All interested members of the university community are warmly welcomed; no registration is required. 

Organized by: János B. Kocsis, Associate Professor, Institute of Sustainable Development, Department of Geography and Planning, janosbalazs.kocsis@uni-corvinus.hu.