Innovative frameworks for sustainable and inclusive urban transformations for a better future for cities

Sustainable urban development increasingly relies on the complex interplay between technological innovation and the social fabric of cities. As urban spaces become more interconnected and saturated with digital technologies, profound changes are occurring in how infrastructures, data systems, and everyday urban life co-evolve. Current research underscores both the opportunities and challenges generated by this digital transformation, particularly as artificial intelligence and algorithmic tools become embedded in city planning, governance, and public services. While this ongoing technological shift offers new pathways for efficiency and optimization, it also intensifies debates over data governance, transparency, bias, urban inequality, and the sociopolitical consequences of digitally mediated urban life. Despite a growing body of evidence exploring digital twins, algorithmic decision-making, and the role of community innovation, existing scholarship often underplays the power imbalances and institutional dynamics that shape, and are shaped by, these technologies. There remains a pressing need for deeper critical engagement to untangle the multilayered effects these innovations have on urban equity, identity, and sustainability.

This Research Topic aims to advance a nuanced analytical framework for understanding and guiding socio-technical change within urban contexts. The central objective is to critically examine the design, deployment, and governance of digital and AI-based systems in cities, while foregrounding their intersections with issues such as social equity, housing affordability, cultural identity, and ecological sustainability. Through this lens, the Research Topic seeks to generate insights into the power relations, institutional structures, and everyday practices that mediate technological transformation, with an emphasis on participatory and people-centric approaches to guiding digital innovation for the public good.

To gather further insights into the ongoing dynamics of socio-technical change in cities, the Research Topic is limited to the interplay between digital technologies, governance structures, and everyday urban experience as they relate to sustainability outcomes. We welcome diverse methodological and theoretical contributions from fields such as urban studies, planning, architecture, and policy analysis that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

- The roles and implications of “urbanist AI,” machine learning, and predictive analytics in city-making
- Digital twins and simulation tools in urban policy, investment, and public participation
- Data governance, privacy, and accountability in smart city environments
- Socio-technical infrastructures and their impact on mobility, energy, and patterns of urban inclusion or exclusion
- Integration of circular economy models in digital urban resource systems
- Community-led and participatory approaches to digital transformation
-Interactions between architecture, urban form, and socio-technical assemblages
- Equity, affordability, displacement, and “green gentrification” in data-driven urban transformation

We invite original research, reviews, case studies, perspectives, and policy analyses that contribute to a critical and constructive understanding of socio-technical change for sustainable urban development.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review

Keywords: Urban Transformation. Sustainable Urban Growth. Smart cities and IoT. AI-driven energy management. Digital twins for urban planning. Data privacy and governance. Circular economy integration. People-centric urban design.

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.