Citiverse: AI Sparrow as a Multispecies Participation Agent for Inclusive Urban Futures

Authors

  • Anniina Autero
  • Jasper de Jonge
  • Suvi Varissaari

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.62161/sauc.v12.6391

Keywords:

Citiverse, Multispecies Participation, Artificial Intelligence, Urban Planning, Planetary Intelligence, Non-Human Agency, Urban Resilience, Conversational AI

Abstract

As cities increasingly adopt the Citiverse paradigm, there is a growing need to move beyond human-centred urban planning and incorporate multispecies perspectives into participatory decision-making. This chapter explores the potential of a Multispecies Resilience AI Agent, represented by a House Sparrow avatar, to facilitate ecological awareness, inclusive participation, and urban resilience. The AI agent was developed to represent non-human perspectives and encourage residents to consider the needs of biodiversity within urban development processes. Findings are based on participatory workshops conducted in Tampere, Finland (N = 19), where participants engaged in conversations with the Sparrow AI within a digital urban environment. Thematic analysis revealed five key outcomes: ecological perspective-taking, emotional engagement, multispecies empathy, playful participation, and conversational trust. Participants used the AI agent not primarily as a decision-support tool, but as a conversational partner that enabled learning, reflection, and imaginative exploration of alternative urban futures.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Global Statistics ℹ️

Cumulative totals since publication
154
Views
72
Downloads
226
Total

References

Ahn, S. J., Bailenson, J., & Park, D. (2014). Short- and long-term effects of embodied experiences in immersive virtual environments on environmental locus of control and behavior. Computers in Human Behavior, 39, 235-245.

Autero, A., de Jonge, J., Varissaari, S. & Olderburg, J (2026). Embodied Citiverse: Participatory Digital Twins and AI for Inclusive Urban Futures in Embodied Access in Extended Reality (XR) and the Metaverse eds. Parker, C & Al. Forthcoming.

Buckton, S. J., Fazey, I., Sharpe, B., et al. (2023). The regenerative lens: A conceptual framework for regenerative social-ecological systems. One Earth, 6(7), 824-842.

Ceschin, F., & Gaziulusoy, I. (2016). Evolution of design for sustainability: From product design to design for system innovations and transitions. Design Studies, 47, 118-163.

Darling, K. (2017). Who's Johnny? Anthropomorphic framing in human-robot interaction. In Integrating Social Robotics into Society.

De Siqueira, G., Malaj, S., & Hamdani, M. (2022). Digitalization, participation and interaction: Towards more inclusive tools in urban design. Sustainability, 14(8), 4514.

Ehsan, U., & Riedl, M. (2021). Human-centered explainable AI. Interactions, 28(4), 60-62.

European Commission. (2024). The Citiverse: Opportunities and Challenges for Cities.

Fanning, A., & Raworth, K. (2025). Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries monitors a world out of balance. Nature, 646, 47-56.

Fink, J. (2012). Anthropomorphism and human likeness in the design of robots and human-robot interaction.

Gualtieri, G., Druta, O., van Wesemael, P., & Velzing, E. (2026). The spectrum of non-human agency: Rethinking participation in multispecies placemaking. Design Studies, 106.

International Telecommunication Union. (2024). Citiverse: A New Paradigm for Human-Centric Cities and Societies.

Lai, Y. (2021). Urban intelligence for planetary health. Earth, 2(4), 972-979.

Liao, Q. V., Gruen, D., & Miller, S. (2020). Questioning the AI: Informing design practices for explainable AI user experiences. Proceedings of CHI 2020.

Miller, T. (2019). Explanation in artificial intelligence: Insights from the social sciences. Artificial Intelligence, 267, 1-38.

O'Donnell, M., Pineda-Pinto, M., Kennedy, C. L., et al. (2026). Exploring multispecies co-design for social-ecological transformation. Ecology and Society, 31(2).

Olsen, C. S. (2022). Co-creation beyond humans: The arts of multispecies placemaking. Urban Planning, 7(3), 315-325.

Raworth, K. (2017). Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. Chelsea Green.

Simonofski, A., Johannessen, M. R., & Stendal, K. (2024). Extended reality for citizen participation: A conceptual framework, systematic review and research agenda. Sustainable Cities and Society, 113.

Tomitsch, M., Fredericks, J., Vo, D., Frawley, J., & Foth, M. (2021). Non-human personas: Including nature in the participatory design of smart cities. Interaction Design & Architecture(s), 50, 102-130.

Tomitsch, M., Fredericks, J., Hoggenmüller, M., Crosby, A., Wong, A., Yu, X., & Huang, W. (2025). AI-supported participatory workshops: Middle-out engagement for crisis events. Urban Planning.

United Nations. (2024). Biodiversity and Climate Change.

UNDRR. (2024). Making Cities Resilient 2030 Framework.

Weizenbaum, J. (1966). ELIZA: A computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine. Communications of the ACM, 9(1), 36-45.

Downloads

Published

2026-09-05

How to Cite

Autero, A., de Jonge, J., & Varissaari, S. (2026). Citiverse: AI Sparrow as a Multispecies Participation Agent for Inclusive Urban Futures. Street Art & Urban Creativity, 12(5), 401–414. https://doi.org/10.62161/sauc.v12.6391

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 5 (2026)

Section

Research articles

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Authors retain copyright and transfer to the journal the right of first publication and publishing rights

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Those authors who publish in this journal accept the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright.

  2. Authors transfer to the journal the right of first publication. The journal also owns the publishing rights.

  3. All published contents are governed by an Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
    Access the informative version and legal text of the license. By virtue of this, third parties are allowed to use what is published as long as they mention the authorship of the work and the first publication in this journal. If you transform the material, you may not distribute the modified work.

  4. Authors may make other independent and additional contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the article published in this journal (e.g., inclusion in an institutional repository or publication in a book) as long as they clearly indicate that the work was first published in this journal.

  5. Authors are allowed and recommended to publish their work on the Internet (for example on institutional and personal websites), following the publication of, and referencing the journal, as this could lead to constructive exchanges and a more extensive and quick circulation of published works (see The Effect of Open Access).