Anthony Townsend is Urbanist In Residence at Cornell Tech in New York City, where he continues more than two decades of research on the future of cities. He is the author of two critically-acclaimed books exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and urban development, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for A New Utopia (2013) and Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car (2020), both published by W.W. Norton & Co. Townsend frequently works with national, state, and local governments on foresight and tech-based economic development projects. He received a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from MIT in 2003.
