CAIO City–AI Coevolution

City–AI Coevolution

Understanding cities shaped by AI.

CAIO (City-AI Coevolution) is a five-year research project (2026–2031) funded with €1.4 million by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) through a Fondo Italiano per la Scienza (FIS) Consolidator Grant.

FIS — Fondo Italiano per la Scienza Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca
Grant agreement
FIS-2024-03129
Call
FIS 3
Total funding
€1,400,000
Duration
5 years
PI
Luca Pappalardo
Email
luca.pappalardo @ cnr.it

How do AI-driven recommendations reshape cities, and how do cities reshape the algorithms that influence them?

01

When do systems optimized for individual convenience produce collective harms such as congestion, emissions, segregation, or inequality?

02

How can AI systems be designed to promote the public good instead?

CAIO addresses these questions by studying the feedback loops between people, algorithms, and urban environments across navigation, ride-hailing, housing, and location-based services.

Combining large-scale data, controlled experiments, mathematical models, and simulations, the project aims to understand and predict the urban effects of AI and to develop complexity-informed recommender systems that balance individual preferences with collective goals.

Latest updates

News

  1. Event

    Prof. Dino Pedreschi will have a talk entitled "Human, or human-like: Transparency for AI generated content" at Officine Garibaldi in Pisa. Prof. Pedreschi will share insights from his experience with the AI Office on developing implementation rules for the AI Act. He will provide an overview of the regulation and discuss its current status.

  2. Publication

    Recommendation Feedback Loops Shape Urban Income Segregation and Venue Visitation is published in Arxiv. It is the outcome of a collaboration with Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) of Trento and Northeastern University of Boston.

  3. Event

    Luca Pappalardo is set to present CAIO's latest findings on gentrification at the Festival delle Regioni e delle Province autonome in Palazzo Strozzi Sacrati, Florence, with a talk entitled Chi abita la città domani? I sintomi invisibili della gentrificazione. See the event brochure (page 48).

  4. Event

    Prof. Gourab Ghoshal will have a CAIO seminar entitled "Information Transfer in Colocation Networks" at Officine Garibaldi.

  5. Event

    Luca Pappalardo will attend the third edition of the European Mobility Symposium, which will be held in Exeter, UK, from September 22nd to September 24th.

  6. Press

    “I Gps fanno aumentare inquinamento ed emissioni di CO2. Ecco perché: tutti sono portati a scegliere le stesse strade” — Marco Gasperetti discusses our research in Corriere della Sera.

  7. Press

    “Google Maps peggiora il traffico?” — Marta Abbà discusses our research in Guerre di Rete.

  8. Publication

    The traffic concentration effects of urban navigation services is published in Nature Communications.

  9. Project

    CAIO launches with a €1.4 million FIS Consolidator Grant to study city–AI coevolution over five years.

Tomorrow’s cities will not be shaped by people or algorithms alone, but by the feedback loops between them.