From pathway to symbiosis: rethinking urban planning in the age of AI

Abstract This featured interview traces Professor Zhong-Ren Peng’s eight-year research trajectory on artificial intelligence in urban planning, from the pathway paper’s four-phase typology of Urban Planning AI to Symbiotic Planning Theory and the CORE framework for governed human–AI co-creation. Across the conversation, a central concern is the capability–legitimacy tension: how planning can expand analytical capacity without eroding democratic legitimacy. The interview highlights the compliance trap, in which procedural adherence coexists with substantive inequity, and argues that accountability as infrastructure and comparative methodology are the next frontier for cumulative, falsifiable AI-enabled planning research.