During this year’s Smart Cities Connect Conference and Expo in Raleigh, NC, one topic garnered considerable attention: AI. Within many city governments, AI is past experimentation and has moved into production. In 2026, city IT leaders are prioritizing  safe, secure, and data-driven AI deployments that deliver measurable outcomes in mobility, public safety, infrastructure management, and climate resilience.

However, as cities move toward operational AI, challenges exist around data readiness, governance, and integration across departments.

Smart cities have been called “the future of urban development”, but what is a smart city and what does it mean to digital designers and engineers?

When you think about smart cities what springs to mind? Perhaps it’s a city app that lets you know the location of available parking spots or a transit company that can automatically re-route buses away from congested areas based on a network of fleet- or city-wide sensors. In reality, the definition of a smart city varies, depending on who you talk to.

It’s clear that smart technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT) are the future of our communities. But, is your agency ready for the billions – soon to be trillions – of sensors and devices connected to one another that will transform our society?

The risks of a breach or attack, particularly to vulnerable network endpoints, are worrying and costly.  Impacts include:

Last month, Autodesk hosted a virtual conference – The Future of Making (now available on-demand) – focused on how AEC and manufacturing industries are capitalizing on new, disruptive technologies to innovate, enhance project design and delivery, and get more from existing investments (like AutoCAD) with learning, networking and cloud resources.