Augmented Urban Planning: A Framework for Strategic Urban Planning

The future is urban and urban problems are complex. Complex problems can be structured through explicit problem formulations. However, strategic urban planning problems have proved to be wicked or ill-structured: i.e. evading formulation. In this paper, we outline Augmented Urban Planning (AUP): an urban planning framework augmented with formal representations of problem formulations in order to methodically explore the alternatives and evaluate the consequences of strategic plans. For this, we establish the theoretical underpinnings of AUP as a framework, articulate the necessary and sufficient conditions of AUP methods, propose Ontologies for integrating Artificial Intelligence in AUP methods' implementation, offer a set of validation tests for AUP methods, and discuss the benefits of formal representations for communication and interoperation.