Renée Sieber, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Geography, McGill University
The Bloustein School is pleased to have Bloustein alumnus Renée Sieber, Ph.D. ’97, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, McGill University present the 2025 Stuart Meck Memorial Lecture, “Civic Engagement in an Era of Artificial Intelligence.”
The event was held virtually on Tuesday, December 2, 2025 beginning at 4:00 p.m.
Read the summary and watch the recording
Since graduating from the Bloustein School, Dr. Sieber has investigated the intersection of civic empowerment and computational technologies. She is best known for her research and practice on public participation geographic information systems, and has also conducted research on participatory climate modeling. She currently researches civic engagement related to artificial intelligence. She co-hosts the monthly Al in Canadian Municipalities Community of Practice, now in its sixth year, where cities exchange best practices on Al use. She has collaborated with numerous federal agencies and organizations in Canada on Al policy. She has advised on the design of two Al risk assessment tools and served on the IEEE working group on Al procurement. She sits on the executive boards of GIScience and Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management.
This talk draws on Dr. Sieber’s research at the intersection of tech and civic engagement. This interest developed during her dissertation with Ph.D. supervisor Lyna Wiggins, who emphasized the local adoption of GIS by planners, a challenge at the time. Throughout her career, Dr. Sieber has been driven to investigate the potential for civic engagement using hard tech, especially as the discourse moves towards tech as the engine of innovation—or example in smart cities. In this, she will draw on her six years co-hosting AI in Canadian Municipalities Community of Practice, as well as 20+ years researching public participation GIS.
Artificial intelligence is sold as a miraculous cure to many of the ills of cities, one of which is a lack of civic (local) engagement. AI can summarize and translate civic participation, and even synthesize participants’ contributions if desired. Additionally, cities may be reluctant to engage citizens on AI—its deployment, impacts, and overall policy—because engagement is supposedly perceived as slowing AI adoption, and because the technology contains these contradictions. It’s opaque, and can only be understood by data scientists. However, it seems effortless to use, thanks to chatbots and software libraries. Humans can and should be in the loop but autonomous agents will save cities time and money.
On top of all of that, AI—especially generative AI—exerts an enormous impact on people’s lives so citizens should be involved. But governments exist in a FOMO (fear of missing out) world, where they feel the need to optimize with AI, lest they miss their competitive advantage. This lecture will discuss these challenges and explore numerous ways that citizens can engage with cities on AI. It will also cover the dark side of AI with regard to civic engagement.
The Stuart Meck Distinguished Speaker Series on Land Use Law and Affordable Housing was established in 2018 by the family of the late Stuart Meck, Associate Research Professor and director of the Center for Planning Practice at the Bloustein School, and a professional planner for more than 45 years. The series highlights experts and practitioners of planning and policy development, offering diverse insight into topics under public and academic debate.
This year’s lecture is dedicated to the memory of Lyna L. Wiggins, a longtime professor and program director in Rutgers’ urban planning program who retired in 2019 and passed away in November 2024. A pioneer in Geographic Information Sciences (GIS), Lyna taught its intricacies to generations of students at the Bloustein School. Most currently practicing planners in New Jersey took one of her courses. All are invited to join us in honoring her memory.