Three Ways AI Can Be a Planner's Friend

Artificial intelligence (AI) presents a plethora of opportunities to enhance our ability to produce efficient and advanced work. Planners are continually asked to do more with less, and in an era where funding streams are scarce, AI presents a low-cost solution. Many concerns have been raised about the implications of AI for the future of work. However, at this stage, AI is most valuable as an assistant to much more important human work endeavors.

AI Boosts Planning Efficiency as an Assistant

Here are three ways AI can make your job easier:

1. Streamline and Automate

With federal guidance shifting and significant uncertainty surrounding the future of many projects, planners are facing increased workloads as they adapt to new requirements and shrinking teams. In this context, AI tools can help streamline and optimize many day-to-day tasks.

One of the most obvious applications of AI is the ability of generative large language models (LLMs) to streamline repetitive and mundane tasks, such as writing meeting summaries and follow-up emails, drafting reports, creating slide decks, and sending calendar invites.

Whether your organization has a Copilot integration in Microsoft workplace environments, or you prefer free (or subscribe to) ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Claude, general-purpose LLMs can help reduce hours of writing and editing.

You can set up a personalized AI notetaker for online and offline meetings and get accurate transcripts of any recorded Zoom or Teams meeting, or any short audio or video files. Translation during meetings is also a useful application for these LLMs.

In the context of resource scarcity, AI can help planners achieve more for communities with less, ensuring both a sound planning process and high-quality outcomes. Many planning offices around the country are integrating AI into their more routine daily tasks, and planners should be prepared to use these emerging tools. For example, Seattle's citywide AI Plan emphasizes worker upskilling to ensure staff can use AI ethically and can respond easily to changes in job descriptions.

Planners should be aware, however, that LLMs can generate misinformation. To use LLMs safely and wisely, make sure you have a general overview of how this technology works (consider checking the PAS Report Planning with Artificial Intelligence by Thomas Sanchez, AICP) and what these tools are best used for. For more info on how AI can help out around the office, also read the Planning article, "Can AI Empower Planners to Accomplish More with Less?"

2. Research and Prototype

When planners need to justify project decisions, allocate funding, and coordinate with major stakeholders, they often must quickly absorb large amounts of new information. AI tools can strengthen research and analysis at every stage of this process. In addition, AI is advancing digital twin technologies by enabling faster, more accurate simulations built on vast and continuously updated datasets.

AI has generated a new era of knowledge production and research. It is now possible to receive well-tailored responses to complex questions simply by crafting a relevant prompt. While high-quality research still requires the time and effort of a team, the process has become far more accessible and approachable. For example, if you need to summarize hundreds of pages of new federal policies into a concise memo, you can use tools like Google Notebook LM to interact directly with a PDF, create mind maps, or even generate explanatory podcasts. AI can help planners gain both a quick overview and a deep understanding of any concept.

Perhaps most valuable, AI makes it possible to simulate and prototype potential outcomes in digital sandboxes. In this new era, the importance of well-structured data, especially in the form of digital twins, becomes even more critical. From digital traffic twins to port twins to environmental twins, planners are finding new ways to test potential solutions using these models every day. As the problems planners face become increasingly data-driven, complex, and fast-paced, AI can help us keep up.

3. Anticipate, Not Just React

At a time when planners are expected to be agile and pivot quickly, AI tools can support internal planning workflows while also enhancing how communities envision and prepare for the future.

Generative AI is a powerful tool to help planners prepare for the uncertainty of the future. It can generate plausible scenarios using different inputs, enabling planners to co-create with communities, develop stories that spark discussion, compare alternatives, and illustrate complex design solutions through approachable visuals.

AI Supports Planning, Needs Human Skills

AI supports both exploratory and normative scenarios, facilitates workshop design, and helps digitize and analyze results. While this potential is inspiring, such applications require new skills and creative approaches. Planners can begin upskilling on their own by using general-purpose large language models to develop prompt creation skills. APA's upskilling initiative and Career Center are working to help planners navigate the AI era in the most efficient, ethical, and sustainable ways.

As AI becomes more embedded in our lives and planning practice, its value will depend not on replacing human expertise but on amplifying it. The examples above show how AI tools can help planners work faster, explore ideas more deeply, and prepare more proactively for change. Yet these tools are only as effective as the judgment guiding them. The future of planning will require a balanced approach: embracing AI's ability to streamline routine tasks and generate insights, while remaining attentive to its limits, biases, and ethical implications.

Top image: The Image Bank - Siri Stafford