“Can we make the city itself a desirable alternative to screens? This is a complex but
critical challenge”

Hubert Beroche is the visionary behind the “Screenless City” concept, which he elaborates on in this interview. As the founder and president of Urban AI, Hubert has institutionalized the study of Urban Artificial Intelligence and developed a global network of organizations, municipalities, companies, and researchers in this field. He has collaborated with multiple cities and urban stakeholders to research, develop, and implement urban AI solutions and has produced several pioneering reports in this domain. He is also an external consultant on Urban AI for the OECD, Lecturer on Urban AI at Sorbonne University, and is the author of the book “Smombies. La ville à l’épreuve des écrans” (iSmombies. The City Tested by Screens).

Q: What do you mean by “Screenless Cities”?

HB: I define Screenless Cities as cities that shift attention from screens to streets. For years, our engagement with urban life—including urban artificial intelligence—has been increasingly mediated through screens. As a result, many urban activities are now conducted via screens, often entirely disconnected from the physical cityscape. A striking consequence of this phenomenon is the rise of “smombies” (a term blending “zombies” and “smartphones”), describing pedestrians so engrossed in their phones that they barely notice their surroundings.

As I explore in my forthcoming book on this topic, the smombie is not merely the product of individual behavior but a systemic issue. It results from a network of stakeholders—corporations, platforms, and advertisers—who profit from capturing and monetizing our attention. While profitable for some organizations, this model is eroding the foundations of urban life and, more broadly, our social cohesion.

Communities worldwide are beginning to recognize this problem. For instance, in 2024, the small village of Seine-Port, France, banned the use of smartphones in public spaces. This decision, made through a local referendum, was aimed at protecting their children from screens and preserving social bonds in public spaces. What is interesting is that the residents of Seine-Port pushed the boundaries of political action—it is, in fact, illegal to ban smartphones in public spaces in France—precisely because they had no alternatives, collectively, to offer to screen dependency in public spaces.

The Screenless City concept aims to limit the dominance of screens—and smombies—without imposing outright bans. Instead, it seeks to create desirable, sustainable alternatives. So, what alternative could we propose to screens? The answer is right before our eyes: the city. A screen is a medium—a surface that transmits information. But the city is also a medium, perhaps one of the oldest, most effective, and most resilient ever created by humanity. Moreover, it is a medium that is embodied, relational, and collective. The concept of the Screenless City thus proposes to reimagine the city as a medium capable of interfacing intelligence – including AI – and information.

Q: Do you have examples of this concept in action?

HB: In 2024, I co-organized The Screenless City Conference at La Sorbonne. This event brought together international researchers and cities to explore this idea. It also showcased several innovators, designers, and artists materializing information—and even artificial intelligence—outside the realm of screens.

One example from this conference is Bret Victor’s prototype Realtalk, a screenless computer that operates through tangible object manipulation. It’s a very interesting approach, and I highly recommend looking it up. We also featured a French artist who creates beautiful urban sculptures to embody energy data in public spaces.

In reality, there are countless ways to materialize information without relying on screens. This is one of the most striking elements when exploring the Screenless City. Initially, imagining screenless interfaces feels almost impossible as if the range of possibilities shrinks to nothing. I call this the “monopoly of screens” the fact that screens have become so deeply intertwined with our existence that we can no longer conceive of life without them. However, once we move beyond this monopoly and start considering all forms of materiality as potential carriers of information, we realize that the field of exploration is immensely vast.

Q: What are your next steps?

HB: The examples I’ve shared illustrate an alternative technological trajectory—one that actually revisits and reinvents some ideas from late 20th-century research. The question now is: how do we chart this trajectory? How can we create a system that redirects the forces of the attention economy toward a more meaningful, embodied, and relational model of information—a model rooted in urban life? In other words, how can we make the city itself a desirable alternative to screens?

This is a complex but critical challenge. Every day, millions of people worldwide answer this question. They unconsciously choose screens over their cities. They become smombies, signaling that what their screens offer is more engaging than the urban environment around them.

This isn’t an individual failure; it’s a systemic one. It reflects our collective inability to lift people’s eyes from their screens and bring back eyes on the street —with all the social, cultural, and economic benefits that entails.

At URBAN AI, the international organization I lead, we’re building a global ecosystem to address this challenge. Our mission is to provide compelling alternatives to screens in public spaces, leveraging AI and innovative urban design to create vibrant, screenless
cities.