What makes a smart city human?
The smart city with human soul
With the EXPO i Smartcities Colombia 2025 Congress, government leaders, digital transformation experts, and urban planners get prepared to debate the cities of the future. Between IoT sensors, 5G networks, and autonomous vehicles, a key question arises: what makes a smart city human?
Beyond technology, a brilliant city puts people at its center. Artificial Intelligence (AI) not only optimizes traffic or saves energy. It also improves well-being, strengthens social cohesion, and cares for the emotional development of the city’s inhabitants.
Beyond technology: smart cities centered in the people
The traditional view of a smart city often focuses on infrastructure and digital gadgets. However, experts agree that cities are truly smart only if they improve people’s lives. As Gabriel Lanfranchi (CIPPEC) states, “being a smart city does not have to do exclusively with technology implementation… The smart city manages to improve the quality of life of its inhabitants while ensuring sustainability,” Cippec.org. In other words, technological advancements must be translated into real citizens’ well-being.
UN-Habitat shares this perspective: their new international guidelines highlight that “people’s needs and priorities, principles of inclusion and human rights must drive the application of digital technology, not the other way around, to ensure a better quality of life for all.” Globalcitieshub.org. Indeed, the core values of a people-centered smart city are inclusivity, equity, and accessibility. This means leaving no one behind: technology must be used to build safer, more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive cities, as also proposed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11. In short, the city of the 21st century will not be smart because of its devices, but because of how they respond to human aspirations.
AI for the urban well-being and social cohesion
Artificial intelligence can be a great catalyst for this humanistic turn in cities. Used well, AI helps local governments make more informed decisions, optimize resources, and provide better experiences for citizens.
The most advanced cities are already leveraging algorithms to improve health services, education, safety and community engagement. Urban wellbeing encompasses physical, mental and social aspects: from air quality to the mental health of the population. In this sense, initiatives such as Healthy Smart Cities are emerging, which propose going beyond sustainability and efficiency to prioritize the factors that affect the health and well-being of citizens.
Mental health and urban environment: designing emotions with AI
For example, AI applied to public health can detect disease patterns, monitor environmental quality in real time, or provide psychological support through intelligent chatbots.
Similarly, in urban planning, considering emotional well-being is crucial: every urban planning decision influences the collective psyche. It’s not just a matter of aesthetics – “the location of services, the structure of streets… and the absence of spaces for socialization shape the emotional terrain of urban life,” warns a World Economic Forum report. A city with a soul takes care of these details, and AI can help by identifying which environments generate stress or happiness, so as to guide urban interventions that foster mental health and cohesion.
Figure – “AI can map the “emotional heartbeat” of the city. A recent study analyzed social media posts with vision and language algorithms, creating an urban sentiment map that identifies where people feel happy, sad, or safe. This urban sentiment analysis tool gives planners a real-time visualization of citizen emotions. With such data, leaders can detect areas of stress or community excitement and take proactive measures. The researchers envision a near future in which these emotional indicators become part of municipal dashboards, “designing cities that not only function well but also feel good to those who live in them.”
Social cohesion is another pillar of a “human” city. AI technology, if applied with an inclusive vision, can strengthen community ties rather than weaken them. One example is the use of AI-powered participatory digital platforms to involve citizens in local decisions, from satisfaction surveys to participatory budgets analyzed with algorithms. According to the OECD, the goal is for smart cities to “boost citizen well-being, promote sustainable environments and optimize the delivery of public services.” This means applying AI to, for example, personalize education (catering to different learning paces), improve inclusive mobility (safer routes for older adults or people with disabilities), and ensure that everyone can access the benefits of digitalization.
Inclusive mobility and citizenship participation: AI serving the common good
AI is already being used to make mobility safer and more—as in intelligent public transport projects that prioritize vulnerable users—and to strengthen community resilience, through systems that disseminate information and coordinate help in emergencies with citizen participation. In short, an AI oriented to the common good can help make the city a place of encounter and mutual support, where diversity is valued and no group is excluded.
Public decision with data and empathy: the human factor in AI
Making smart cities more humane does not mean rejecting data or automation, but integrating them with socioemotional intelligence and ethics. The municipal governments of the near future will have to rely on massive data analysis to understand what works and what doesn’t, but will always be putting a human face on the figures. This requires new technical and socioemotional skills. A brilliant algorithm is of little use if those in charge do not understand the emotional needs of the population or if citizens distrust the tools.
Data with a human face: new skills for new governance
At this point, soft skills training and participation are crucial: UN-Habitat itself emphasizes digital education of officials and inhabitants so that everyone can benefit from smart services. It also insists on adopting human rights frameworks to mitigate risks, ensuring that urban AI is ethical, transparent and free of bias.
Evaluate talent without bias: an AI that takes care of people
An outstanding example of a humanistic approach in AI is the work of Human AI Tech, the AI behind this blog. Our company applies artificial intelligence to assess and develop socioemotional competencies in people in an objective way. Why is it relevant for smart cities? Because a people-centered city also needs institutions and teams with socioemotional intelligence. Projects such as Human AI demonstrate that AI can be used to assess talent without bias, identify potential in each person and promote their well-being in work and educational environments.
Al incorporar estas herramientas en el sector público, imaginemos procesos de selección de personal más justos, planes de capacitación personalizados o evaluaciones de políticas públicas que consideren el impacto emocional en la ciudadanía. En definitiva, se trata de tomar decisiones basadas en datos rigurosos pero alineadas con la empatía y la justicia social. La IA no reemplaza el juicio humano, pero ofrece otra manera de detectar patrones y tendencias que de otro modo pasarían desapercibidos, lo que puede conducir a decisiones más inteligentes. El desafío es aprovechar esa capacidad para enriquecer – no suplantar – la deliberación humana, logrando políticas más informadas a la vez que sensibles.
By incorporating these tools in the public sector, let’s imagine fairer personnel selection processes, customized training plans or public policy evaluations that consider the emotional impact on citizens. In short, it is about making decisions based on rigorous data but aligned with empathy and social justice. AI does not replace human judgment, but it offers another way to detect patterns and trends that would otherwise go unnoticed, which can lead to smarter decisions. The challenge is to harness that ability to enrich—not supplant—human deliberation, leading to more informed yet responsive policies.
Towards a more humane smart city
When artificial intelligence is truly put at the service of people, the city ceases to be a mere hodgepodge of sensors and data and becomes an enriched community, where technology amplifies quality of life, happiness and justice.
In this scenario, a smart streetlight not only saves energy, but also makes streets safer and more welcoming; an urban data system optimizes traffic. But it also guides growth with human sense, avoids social gaps and takes care of collective mental health.
Public leaders visiting EXPO i Colombia 2025 will find in the conjunction of AI + humanism the key to reimagine their cities. The promise of humanized smart cities is that every digital breakthrough has social progress built into it. This is the compass that should guide urban transformation: technology with human purpose, decisions with heart and data with empathy. Only then will the smart city live up to its name, transcending the technical to become a true home for all its inhabitants.
