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Dr. Federico Cugurullo

Associate Professor (Geography)
MUSEUM BUILDING
      
Profile Photo

Dr. Federico Cugurullo

Associate Professor (Geography)
MUSEUM BUILDING

 cugurulf@tcd.ie

 3531896 4915


Federico Cugurullo is Associate Professor in Smart and Sustainable Urbanism at Trinity College Dublin. His research is positioned at the intersection of urban geography, political philosophy and experimental urbanism, and explores how ideas of sustainability and modernity are cultivated and implemented, with a focus on projects for smart, eco and autonomous cities. He is currently researching how artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting on urban governance and planning, thereby influencing the sustainability of cities. Federico has done extensive empirical research in the Middle East and Southeast Asia where he has investigated the sustainability performance of supposedly experimental cities such as Masdar City in Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong. His work has been used by the United Nations and the United Kingdom's Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to foresee future urban challenges and develop preventive policies. Theoretically, Federico is interested in unpacking the notion of AI from an urbanistic perspective, and in fleshing out the conceptual implications of AI-mediated urban spaces, such as the "end of the city" hypothesis introduced in his monograph Frankenstein Urbanism (Routledge 2021). Other theoretical contributions include the concept of urban eco-modernisation, the notion of urban artificial intelligence, and the development of urban equations. Before joining Trinity College Dublin, Federico held positions at the University of Manchester, King's College London and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE   autonomous vehicles   generative AI   HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION   new cities   Smart Cities
Details Date
Associate Editor of Frontiers in Sustainable Cities 2019 - present
Member of the editorial board of Geotema 2018 - present
Reviewer for the European Commission of ERC Starting Grants and Advance Grants. 2020 - present
Research analyst, Cities Programme (United Nations) 2013-2014
Horizon scanner, Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), United Kingdom Government 2014-2016
Language Skill Reading Skill Writing Skill Speaking
Italian Fluent Fluent Fluent
Details Date From Date To
Global associate, Circles of sustainability (UN Global Compact Cities Programme; Metropolis) 2015 present
Fellow, American Association of Geographers 2011 present
Fellow, International Eco-Cities Initiative 2011 present
Fellow, Royal Geographical Society 2009 present
Cugurullo F., Xu Y., When AIs become oracles: generative artificial intelligence, anticipatory urban governance, and the future of cities, Policy and Society, 2025, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Palmini O., Cugurullo F., Design culture for Sustainable urban artificial intelligence: Bruno Latour and the search for a different AI urbanism, Ethics and Information Technology, 26, (1), 2024, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Xu Y., Cugurullo F., Zhang H., Gaio A., Zhang W., The Emergence of Artificial Intelligence in Anticipatory Urban Governance: Multi-Scalar Evidence of China"s Transition to City Brains, Journal of Urban Technology, 2024, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Cugurullo F., Acheampong R.A., Fear of AI: an inquiry into the adoption of autonomous cars in spite of fear, and a theoretical framework for the study of artificial intelligence technology acceptance, AI and Society, 39, (4), 2024, p1569 - 1584, p1569-1584 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
McCarroll Cian, Cugurullo Federico, Social implications of autonomous vehicles: a focus on time, AI & Society, (37), 2022, p791 - 800, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Gaio, Alexander, and Federico Cugurullo, Cyclists and autonomous vehicles at odds: Can the Transport Oppression Cycle be Broken in the Era of Artificial Intelligence?, AI & Society, 2022, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  URL
Federico Cugurullo, Frankenstein Urbanism: Eco, Smart and Autonomous Cities, Artificial Intelligence and the End of the City, London, Routledge, 2021, Book, PUBLISHED  URL
Acheampong, R. A., Cugurullo, F., Gueriau, M., & Dusparic, I. , Can autonomous vehicles enable sustainable mobility in future cities? Insights and policy challenges from user preferences over different urban transport options, Cities, 112, 2021, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Federico Cugurullo, Ransford Acheampong, Maxime Gueriau, Ivana Dusparic, The transition to autonomous cars, the redesign of cities and the future of urban sustainability, Urban Geography, 2020, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Gueriau, Maxime and Cugurullo, Federico and Acheampong, Ransford A. and Dusparic, Ivana, Shared Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand: Learning-based approach and its performance in the presence of traffic congestion, IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine, 2020, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text
  

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Federico Cugurullo, Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces, Review of Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces, by Davina Cooper , Area, 46, (4), 2014, p448 , Review, PUBLISHED
Reconsidering Utopia and Dystopia: a matter of perception in, editor(s)Blaim A. and Gruszewska Blaim , Spectres of Utopia. Theory, Practice, Conventions, Oxford, Peter Lang, 2012, [Federico Cugurullo], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED

  


Award Date
IRC Laureate Award September 2022
The Syllabus Book of the Week: Frankenstein Urbanism June 2021
Provost's PhD Project Award January 2020
New Horizons Interdisciplinary Research Award, Irish Research Council (220,000 euro), Principal Investigator, project title: Surpass - How shared autonomous cars will transform cities. December 2016
Plenary at the international winter conference of the Regional Studies Association November 2016
Recognizing and Rewarding Exceptional Performance (RREP) - University of Manchester June 2016
Italy Made Me Award (Social Sciences and Humanities Category), Best Italian early-stage academic working in the UK, Italian Embassy July 2015
European Union's Master and Back Postgraduate Scholarship (76,640 euro) October 2009
Federico's latest strand of research investigates, empirically and theoretically, how the development of artificial intelligence is changing the development of cities. He is currently the Principal Investigator of Surpass, a project funded by the Irish Research Council, to study the urban sustainability potential of self-driving cars operated by AI: http://research.ie/what-we-do/loveirishresearch/blog/autonomous-cars-are-driving-fast-towards-us/