What happens to cities when work is dismantled by AI and robotics?
Cities have always been built around people. Infrastructure and urban planning determine where and how they will work, how they move, where they gather, and what they need.
For generations, the logic of the city has been tied to human effort, from factory floors and office towers to transit systems, retail districts, cultural centers, and homes built around the rhythms of daily work. But now, that logic is being tested.
As AI, robotics, and automation move from possibility to reality, cities are facing a deeper question than how to become more efficient. They are being asked to define what they are for.
A debate about the purpose of cities
That question will take center stage at WRLD CTY 2026 on 16 June, where ERA-co will headline as the festival’s featured partner. The global place consultancy will host one of the event’s defining debates: “Will Robotics Improve Our Cities, Or Make Them Redundant?”
The sessions will bring the future of urban life into sharp focus for an audience of city leaders, developers, policymakers, investors, and placemakers. It is a topic that touches nearly every part of how cities are planned, financed, designed, governed, and experienced.
At the center of the discussion is a simple yet unsettling idea: if intelligent machines begin to take on more physical and cognitive labor, cities can no longer be understood primarily as places organized around work or humans.
Steven Cornwell, ERA-co Global Director, will moderate the debate.
“Cities have long been shaped by human effort,” Cornwell says. “As robotics and AI begin taking on more physical and cognitive tasks, urban leaders must look beyond efficiency and ask a more fundamental question: what role cities will play when work is no longer their central organizing force.”
Two views of an automated urban future
For some, robotics and automation could create cities that work better for people. They could make infrastructure more responsive, reduce inefficiencies, improve accessibility, and free people from repetitive or physically demanding work. In this view, cities evolve beyond production into centers of culture, creativity, and human connection.
That is the case that Hugo Lamb, ERA-co’s Australian Group Strategy Director, will bring to the WRLD CTY stage. He will argue that robotics can enable more adaptive and people-focused urban environments.
The opposing view will be presented by Alex Baum, ERA-co’s Global VP of Strategy, who will challenge whether automation could weaken the very foundations cities rely on. If fewer people need to gather for work, commerce, services, or production, what happens to the economic density and social intensity that sustain cities?
It is easy to talk about technology as a tool. It is harder to talk about what changes when that tool begins reshaping the purpose of the built environment.
ERA-co’s in the future-city conversation
ERA-co’s role at WRLD CTY reflects its broader focus on shaping high-performance places in a period of structural change. The organization works with ambitious leaders to shape high-performing places, from workplaces to large-scale urban master plans. ERA-co connects creativity, commercial strategy, and urbanism, helping guide the vision, positioning, and experience framework behind places designed for long-term social and economic value.
This reflects a view that the future of cities is not solely a design or technology question, but one tied to economic performance, governance, and human behavior.
ERA-co’s participation at WRLD CTY also points to a wider goal of positioning the firm as a leading voice in emerging major urban areas as AI and robotics change the purpose of place. The debate is not a one-off panel, but as part of a broader conversation with citymakers, urban planners, architects, developers, real estate professionals, investors, and policymakers.
Those groups may approach the topic from different angles, but they all face the same reality: Cities are being rebuilt while the assumptions underpinning them continue to shift.
The choices that will shape future cities
There is no single answer to what cities will become next. The most meaningful progress will come from testing ideas, challenging assumptions, reviewing evidence, and the willingness to ask harder questions.
ERA-co’s headline debate gives that process a public stage.
Will robotics improve cities, or make them redundant? The answer may depend less on the machines themselves and more on the choices city leaders make now.
Technology will change what cities can do. The decisions made now will determine what cities are for.
