What does an AI city look like?

I’m recently back from a few weeks in San Francisco and, as tour guide to a group of first-time visitor friends I duly showcased the highlights – the Maritime park, the sea lions, Chinatown, Alcatraz, cable cars and the Golden Gate Bridge. These enduring features that define the city coexist with other defining features such as pervasive homelessness and drug abuse, which the newly elected mayor is urgently seeking to address.

But since my last visit 2 years ago, San Francisco has another dominating feature: AI. You cannot miss its influence as you wander around the city. You see it, you feel it -- it’s more than a passing vibe.

I experienced it in several ways.

It starts with public messaging, from both private companies and the city itself. Some examples:

If you are out about across the city, you cannot miss the messaging about AI.

Then you have Waymo, the self-driving cars.

What at first seems a futuristic (dystopian?) fantasy very quickly becomes normalised – because they’re everywhere, operating several hundred vehicles 24/7 and expanding into a wider area (as well as other US cities)They’re also safe, convenient and actually quite pleasant. Here’s what the experience looks like:

And then you have a host of organisations that were still in their infancy two years ago occupying substantial real estate in the city and employing an incredibly international group of people – most of whom live and work in San Francisco itself, v Silicon Valley to the south. This includes Open AI, Anthropic, Scale AI as well as an increasing number of startup incubators. I met quite a few Brits working in both the labs and the incubators, which made me wonder if there’s a brain drain going on.

On my flight back to London I watched a documentary called AI at Work: Who Runs the Office? and was struck by its focus on individuals and workplaces in two cities -- San Francisco and London. It made me dig a little further into where these cities stand in the rankings of AI, but also to think about how AI is shaping the London experience and if the brain drain to San Francisco I wondered about is just a blip or even an illusion.

So I checked with Global AI Ecosystem, an open-source platform and knowledge hub for all things AI. It ranks cities globally on a range of AI-related measures and categories, and its most recent rankings include   “Top AI-friendly Cities”, “Top Cities with the highest concentration of AI talent”, “Top AI-driven Cities, and “Top Global Cities on AI Readiness Index”.

While London is in seventh place on the first two categories, it’s in first place on the second two. This is impressive when you understand what being in first place means.

In terms of being a “top AI-driven city”, it’s based on this:

“The methodology for determining the top AI-driven cities aims to identify and rank cities that have embraced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and applications to drive innovation, economic growth, and improve quality of life. These cities leverage AI in various sectors, including transportation, healthcare, governance, education, and sustainability. The methodology considers various factors to assess the city's AI infrastructure, initiatives, talent pool, innovation ecosystem, and societal impact.”

And in terms of being a “top global city in AI readiness”, it’s based on this:

“The methodology for determining the top global cities by AI readiness index aims to assess and rank cities based on their preparedness and readiness to adopt and leverage artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The AI readiness index considers various factors to evaluate the city's infrastructure, talent pool, policy environment, innovation ecosystem, and adoption of AI across various sectors. The methodology provides a comprehensive framework to assess the AI readiness of cities and identify the top performers.”

It's clear London is a serious player in AI, and is poised to become even more serious. So how is this being supported and what does it mean for the London experience?

The place to start thinking about this is the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, published earlier this year, in which the Secretary of State for Science & Innovation sets out a vision based on three goals: building the foundations of AI through world-class computing and data infrastructure, access to talent and regulation; inspiring and supporting AI adoption across the economy, including the public sector; being an “AI maker, not an AI taker”  -- which means having “true national champions at critical layers of the AI stack” so that the UK benefits economically from AI advancement and has influence on future AI’s values, safety and governance.

One call to action that the Plan outlines is the establishment of “AI Growth Zones” to “facilitate the build out of AI data centres”. Data centres, delivering “compute” capacity, are an elemental feature of AI development and delivery. Without compute capacity, the vast quantities of data and repetitive tasks that drive AI are impossible.

These data centres are bricks and mortar facilities located in geographical places. In practical, boots-on-the- ground terms, each and every large data centre built in the UK requires an army of professionals - from architects, lawyers, and accountants to engineers, construction workers and operators.

The AI Action Plan recognises this and has put data centres at the heart of its ambitions for Growth Zones, arguing that by establishing zones in local areas, they will

·      introduce a streamlined planning approvals process and accelerate the provisioning of clean power

·      drive local rejuvenation, channelling investment into areas with existing energy capacity such as post-industrial towns and coastal Scotland

·      generate other measures to accelerate buildout of data centres, such as offering central guidance, creating a bespoke planning use-class and considering the case for AI data centres to be eligible for relevant relief schemes that incentivise private sector investment.

As of two weeks ago, over 200 expressions of interest have been received from local authorities across the country in response to the government’s AI Growth Zone initiative. Data centre operators welcome this as an opportunity to spread the development of centres beyond their current concentration in London and the southeast: “Any way you cut it, pooling the nation’s data centres in the south east, where space is already at a premium, makes little sense. If the Government is looking for an easy win on economic regeneration in stagnant areas, one of the best moves it could make would be to designate data centre planning zones alongside AI Growth Zones across the UK.”

Data centres are not, however, the only manifestation of AI in our cities and towns.

Last year the London Property Alliance produced a report on AI and the Built Environment which looks at six key areas: impact on jobs, data access, AI integration, education and reskilling, copyright, ethics and legislation, across the five stages of development, design, site assessment, planning, construction and smart management. 

Its report, based on a wide-reaching survey and extensive  interviews across the property sector, identified how AI is likely to change the look and feel of London:

“London has much to gain from AI: With intense pressures on land in the capital, AI has the potential to facilitate workstreams and deliver new development more efficiently; An AI-enabled planning system could work faster to support London’s growth; An accelerated optioneering process can reduce the uncertainty of land speculation and ensure appropriate development densities for urban sites; AI-generated feedback can inform rational decision-making throughout the design and development process to prevent late-stage issues, redesigns and post-rationalisations; Real-time insights can steer building management systems towards more sustainable operations to help decarbonise the London property sector, which currently accounts for 78% of the capital’s emissions."

 If you want some inspiration about how London might benefit from AI, talk to

Martin Prince-Parrott, whose recently published Urban Healthonomics, describes how AI will be transformational in driving the development of places that support human health and flourishing. Why? Because it will empower local people – who are at the heart of urban healthonomics – as they are invested as knowledge bearers, negotiators, and potential wealth creators in the places of the future.

From green spaces, energy supply & distribution, housing and cultural urban “vibes”, Martin offers evidence and ideas on how local people can drive the change needed to develop healthy places, empowered with AI.

London is a much larger city than San Francisco – ten times the population. Its adoption of AI is going to have a very different look and feel and its impact will be felt differently both domestically and globally.

Waymo isn’t coming to London anytime soon, and the brain drain is a small blip as London-based AI talent builds experience in the US labs and gains access to established sources of capital for tech. The Trump administration’s immigration policies are actually causing anxiety amongst non-American tech professionals, and we may see shifts in flows and concentrations of AI talent.

What does an AI city look like? Keep your eye on London, and we’ll soon find out.

Clare Delmar

Listen to Locals

14 May 2025