Lecture: How to design within the AI Act and how that relates to the Affordable Housing Act

The AI Act is often presented as compliance, a list of obligations that designers and municipalities need to tick off. But the purpose of the law is different: protecting fundamental rights, human control, and democratic decision-making against the risks of AI systems. For cities deploying AI in permitting, area development, or monitoring, that has concrete implications. Which applications fall under which risk level? What does the obligation of human oversight mean for how you design a system, not as an afterthought but as a design choice made upfront? And how do you make sure that a resident who disagrees with an AI-driven decision actually knows how and where to challenge it? The speaker shows how municipalities and regulators will enforce this law in practice, and how a city can use the AI Act as an instrument for democratic control rather than as a legal obstacle.

The Affordable Housing Act is putting full weight behind digitalisation as a tool to accelerate the housing construction challenge. The European Commission explicitly identifies digital permitting as the standard cities should move toward. That puts the law at odds with the carefulness the AI Act demands: one law pushes toward speed and automation, the other toward human control and accountability. The speaker shows how a municipality digitalising its permitting process to meet the 60-day deadline must do so within the boundaries the AI Act sets for AI-driven decision-making. What does that mean for the design of such a system? And who actually retains control when a permit is automated within 60 days?