Architecture and urbanism have moved beyond the design of objects to engage with systems, processes, and lived condition. As climate change accelerates, the built environment becomes both a site of vulnerability and a field of possibility. This project began with a simple premise: to explore how the act of visualizing can give shape to invisible risks and open pathways for collective understanding.
At the center of this inquiry is a guiding question. What is the role of artificial intelligence in translating local knowledge into spatial narratives?
The project developed and tested an early model for real-time visual storyboards. Two pilot workshops were conducted in Port Aransas and Portland, Texas. Each workshop brought together residents, students, and planning professionals to reflect on local climate hazards, identify shared concerns, and imagine adaptive responses. Participants contributed place-based knowledge through site walks, discussions, and collaborative mappings. Their insights were translated into evolving storyboards composed of spatial sketches, annotated diagrams, and layered drawings.
Artificial intelligence was used as a visual co-author. It helped transform spoken and sketched input into spatial representations that could be reflected upon and revised. This process supported the emergence of shared narratives, connecting environmental risk with community memory, infrastructure, and aspiration. AI was not used to replace human authorship. It was used to amplify it.
The outcomes demonstrate how to structure collaboration between human and artificial intelligence in urban visioning. The real-time storyboard method allowed participants to see their ideas rendered visually as part of the ongoing process. This opened new opportunities for reflection, reorientation, and shared authorship. It also made abstract risks more tangible by grounding them in the language of space, experience, and imagination.
This research formed the foundation for a subsequent grant-funded project that continues to investigate hybrid intelligence in the context of climate-responsive city-making. The work is currently in the publication process and contributes to emerging conversations about how spatial design can integrate human insight with computational tools in meaningful ways.
Visualization in this context is not about prediction. It is about participation. It becomes a way to situate knowledge, communicate uncertainty, and explore the futures that can be imagined when people and machines begin to see the city together.
