AI agents are coming to cities in 2026 to help run important services like roads, housing, and planning. By 2027, about 65% of cities around the world will use these smart AI agents to do daily tasks that usually need people to do them. Right now, half of all city and state governments are feeding old information and data into these systems to make them work better.

These AI agents are going to help cities in big ways. In housing, AI can speed up the process of approving building plans by reading them and checking them against city rules automatically. For transportation, instead of waiting months to see if a new traffic rule worked, cities can now use AI to get instant feedback and fix problems right away. The technology will help cities be smarter and faster instead of just reacting when problems happen.

But there are worries too. Privacy and fairness are big concerns because these AI systems use a lot of old data that might have unfair rules or biases in it. A government leader in Alexandria, Virginia said the real challenge in 2026 won't be whether cities use AI, but whether they put the right rules and human oversight in place to keep it safe and trustworthy. Cities also need to watch out for cyber attacks since these systems control important things like traffic and emergency services.

California is leading the way with a huge building boom of data centers that power these AI systems. The whole world's data center power use might more than double by 2030, and AI workloads are a big reason why. Building these facilities is very expensive and complicated, with projects needing thousands of workers and massive amounts of electricity.