AI and the Urban Planner: A Comparative SWOT Analysis of Western and Eastern Urban Planning Practice

Rapid advancements in technology provide new functionality to challenge existing paradigms in many industries. AI and urban planning is one such example. This paper uses SWOT analyses to assess AI's challenges and opportunities across ten selected countries. The examination is divided into a Western context (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Spain) and an Eastern context (the United Arab Emirates, China, the Philippines, Japan, and Singapore). The author utilized peer-reviewed publications from 2021 to 2025 in data gathering. Applications of AI technologies such as digital twins, generative AI, and geospatial analytics are applied to transport, land use planning, participatory planning, and environmental planning across the cited countries. The author analyzed AI use problems in planning through the ethical perspectives of planning associations' national codes of conduct and planning associations' codes of AI ethics. This examination of planning codes and AI in urban planning is arguably the first paper to question how these codes deal with the control of algorithms and the professional responsibilities of planners. A unique feature of this paper encompasses the environmental, carbon, and water footprint that data centers — which AI relies upon — create. This paper suggests that the identified gaps in technology, planning ethics, environmental governance, social governance frameworks, AI planning, technology, AI ethics codes, and the control of algorithms provide a foundation for planning to address the deficit in planning research, planning ethics, and the existing gaps in AI ethics governance frameworks.