Artificial intelligence and temporalities of urban design: from modern linearity to algorithmic chrono-urbanism

Abstract

The paper critically analyzes the incorporation of artificial intelligence in contemporary urban design through the notion of crossed temporalities, discussing how informational systems and algorithms reconfigure the time of the design process. It is argued that, in this context, informatics should not be understood as a merely technological resource, but rather as a sociotechnical field of mediation, simulation, and temporal condensation in urban design, closely linked to the field of digital humanities. Grounded in authors who problematize urban rhythms, social acceleration, and temporal simultaneity, the study argues that artificial intelligence shifts urban design from a linear and sequential model, characteristic of modernity, to an iterative, recursive, and polychronic regime, approaching what François Ascher defines as chrono-urbanism. Through a qualitative, theoretical-conceptual approach, the article articulates contributions from the history of time, narrative theory, and critiques of presentism, highlighting both the potentialities and the risks of algorithmic anticipation, the compression of decision-making time, and the automation of expectations in urban planning. It concludes that artificial intelligence constitutes a contemporary condition of urban design, while questioning its inherently positive meaning and emphasizing the need for a critical repositioning of architects and urban planners as mediators of algorithmic temporalities, in dialogue with social and urban rhythms.