The Initiative for Advanced Urbanization and Artificial Intelligence (IAUAI) is the non-profit organization within the Rapid Urbanism ecosystem. The Initiative was formally incorporated as IAUAI gGmbH company as well as recognized as a charity under German corporate and tax law in 2019, thus delivering on Rapid Urbanism’s public announcement at the UN conference World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur in 2018.

The following paragraphs outline IAUAI’s understanding of the rapid urbanization challenge, IAUAI’s strategy for addressing the challenge, and a call for collaboration.

Global Challenge: inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable urbanization at high speed and large scale. Rapidly growing cities do not keep pace with the need for new formal and serviced land for housing and other land uses, often exceeding double the size of existing urban areas. Limited technical and administrative capacity constitute major bottlenecks, which is aggravated by a lack of appropriate planning tools. Consequently, informal settlements continue to grow with poor social, economic and environmental outcomes, for example in slums.

IAUAI Aim: to reduce new slum formation by providing adequate alternatives in rapidly growing cities. Vision: rapidly growing cities are empowered for realizing advanced urbanization projects that are inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (SDG11), such as planned city extension, infill, or participatory slum upgrading, and in developing their local economies and markets, harnessing the benefits of urbanization for all.

IAUAI Theory of Change: complex knowledge on urbanization is captured in knowledge-based tools and deployed in project development facilities, empowering local multi-stakeholder partnerships and bridging the gap between science and application. Therefore, IAUAI pursues three synergistically inter-linked pillars of activities:

• Pillar 1. Knowledge
  Research develops spatial and economic models and builds case study libraries with parametric prototypes for advanced urbanization;
• Pillar 2. Tools, incl. Artificial Intelligence
  tailor-made methods and instruments, including artificial intelligence, aid bridging the gap between complex knowledge (pillar 1) and management of advanced urbanization projects (pillar 3);
• Pillar 3. Projects
  Project development facilities support local multi-stakeholder partnerships for application of the knowledge (pillar 1) through on-the-job training and peer-to-peer learning during collective planning, vetting and implementation of advanced urbanization projects.

At the core of IAUAI’s pillar 2 is to make the Rapid Urbanism Explorer accessible to the public through a low-threshold user interface, tailor-made products to the needs of development actors, and fair pricing:

The Rapid Urbanism Explorer is an Augmented Intelligence Platform for rapid iterative virtual prototyping of urbanization proposals, based on the Rapid Urbanism Framework and making this complex knowledge framework manageable and accessible. The Explorer accelerates the planning, enhances the quality of proposals, and contributes towards the Pareto-optimal implementation of real-world projects. Moreover, the Explorer aids stakeholders in understanding the impact of interlinked planning decisions (e.g. land use, infrastructure layouts and standards, housing, subsidies, livelihoods) and in balancing their interests, for example in regard to:

• Quality of the habitat (e.g. livability, sustainability and resilience);
• Affordability to all income groups, including the urban poor (i.e. inclusion);
• Profitability to private developers, landowners and lenders (i.e. local economic development); and
• Fiscal viability to governments (e.g. land value capture, level and type of subsidies, if any).

We look forward to your questions and insights and invite you to collaborate in the non-profit Initiative for Advanced Urbanization and Artificial Intelligence!

With high regards,
Matt Nohn, Founder CEO                          Evandro Davi Holz, Co-Founder CEO

Downloads and further information:
1. IAUAI Call for Funding
2. IAUAI Presentation, including a Call for Funding and Technical Annexes (English);
3. IAUAI’s articles of association (official document in German, Version from Mar 14, 2019);
4. IAUAI’s articles of association  (partial English translation, including the mission statement; Version from Jan 9, 2019).