Discover how AI chatbots can transform citizen engagement in city services, offering 24/7 interaction capabilities, streamlining service requests, and gathering valuable feedback to improve urban management.

City services are only effective with engagement from residents. Urban planners need feedback to understand unmet needs and how best to meet them, and social services function better when more people interact with them. Fostering such activity can be tricky by conventional means, but artificial intelligence (AI) provides a way forward — chatbots.
AI-powered chatbots have already become commonplace in industries like retail and e-commerce. Bringing the same technology to online public service portals can improve citizen engagement in several ways.
Streamlining citizen Q&As
The biggest advantage of chatbots is that they provide immediate answers to residents’ questions. Government services are infamous for being slow and opaque. Consequently, the speed of a chatbot can make a significant difference in how citizens communicate with their local agencies.
Manual help lines require substantial staffing numbers to manage large call volumes. This leads to long wait times and overworked, flustered employees, limiting their usefulness. Chatbots, by contrast, can answer basic questions in real time with no waiting period, while human agents handle complex queries.
This convenience is why 67 percent of consumers use chatbots for quick interactions. Capitalizing on the opportunity will also decrease departments’ manual workloads so they can tackle more complicated issues despite labor shortages.
Providing around-the-clock support
Similarly, a chatbot can answer questions or inform citizens of important updates at any time. As a result, residents whose work schedules may stand in the way of talking to representatives during normal hours can still get the help they need.
Some AI chatbots can automate as much as 60 percent of customer service tasks. Consequently, public services don’t need as many staff on call to respond to pressing requests at odd hours, such as the middle of the night. This efficiency is particularly valuable for emergency responses.
Chatbots can field citizens’ requests and input during an off-hours emergency to enable fast responses at any time. As the bots automate the administrative side, humans can tackle the more mission-critical parts of responding to the incident without delay, improving safety and trust.
Boosting transparency
AI chatbots are also a great way for cities to become additionally transparent. Connecting a bot to documentation from multiple departments enables it to answer questions about all current municipal events and developments. The chatbot becomes a one-stop shop for everything citizens need to know about their area, making it easier to stay informed.
It’s also worth considering how many AI platforms can work in multiple languages. For instance, ChatGPT supports over 50 languages — far more than most local governments can reasonably have native speakers of. This versatility means residents who may be unable to understand posts or documentation can get the answers they need through a bot.
Best practices for implementing chatbots in city services
These advantages make it clear why 81 percent of mayors interested in generative AI intend to use it to boost citizen engagement. Urban planners hoping to support that trend can begin by determining the ideal platform for their needs.
Cities can either build their own chatbot or use an existing solution. The former may be better for personalization and city-specific applications, but the latter will reduce costs and complexity. In either case, teams should compare multiple software vendors or development partners. Ensuring third parties follow appropriate data privacy practices and AI ethics guidelines is crucial.
Urban planners must also train their bots on relevant data. This information should reflect the kinds of questions and documentation the solution will have to manage in practice as closely as possible. However, if it’s real-world information, teams must scrub it of any identifiers first to maintain privacy. Synthetic data is a convenient alternative to provide training datasets without risking breaches.
Chatbots should not store sensitive data after a conversation ends and only access materials necessary to provide relevant answers to user queries. Government organizations experienced 4.3 percent of all cyberattacks in 2023, making it one of the top 10 most-targeted sectors. Consequently, penetration testing before launch and ongoing monitoring may be necessary.
AI chatbots can bring cities closer to their citizens
AI chatbots are not a perfect tool, but they streamline user interactions and boost back-office efficiency. Consequently, they’re an excellent way for cities to drive citizen engagement and overcome historical barriers. The benefits will only grow as the technology advances.

Manufactured Crisis: Losing the Nation’s Largest Source of Unsubsidized Affordable Housing
Manufactured housing communities have long been an affordable housing option for millions of people living in the U.S., but that affordability is disappearing rapidly. How did we get here?

Americans May Be Stuck — But Why?
Americans are moving a lot less than they once did, and that is a problem. While Yoni Applebaum, in his highly-publicized article Stuck, gets the reasons badly wrong, it's still important to ask: why are we moving so much less than before?

Research Shows More Roads = More Driving
A national study shows, once again, that increasing road supply induces additional vehicle travel, particularly over the long run.

How Protecting Kauaʻi’s Forests Safeguards Fresh Water
A University of Hawaiʻi study shows that protecting Kauaʻi’s native forests from invasive species significantly boosts groundwater recharge, making it a cost-effective strategy to secure fresh water and enhance climate resilience.

Gary, Indiana to Expand Transit Service, Bike Share
The city plans to launch a bike share system in April and expand service on its bus routes.

Pittsburgh Rolls Out Electric School Buses
Pittsburgh Public Schools has launched its first electric school buses, with plans to fully electrify its fleet over the next 14 months, aiming to create a cleaner, more sustainable transportation system supported by new charging infrastructure.
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
City of Moreno Valley
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
City of Grandview
Harvard GSD Executive Education
NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
City of Cambridge, Maryland
Newport County Development Council: Connect Greater Newport
