Network analysis of Urban AI ecosystem of Quebec region

The growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in cities is reshaping urban governance, service delivery, and innovation processes. While existing smart city literature has extensively examined technological infrastructures and ethical principles, it has paid less attention to the concrete actors, activities, and interdependencies that structure the real-world deployment of AI in municipalities. This paper addresses this gap by examining how urban AI is organized through an innovation ecosystem and how this configuration reconfigures smart city governance. Drawing on a mixed methodology combining document analysis, network analysis, and 26 semi-structured interviews, the study maps the structure and dynamics of Quebec’s municipal AI ecosystem. The findings reveal a fragmented yet highly mediated ecosystem in which municipalities remain central demand holders but depend heavily on technology firms and intermediary non-profit organizations for development, deployment, and governance. Network analysis shows that technological and cognitive interdependencies dominate over economic ones, concentrating power in actors that control expertise, coordination, and knowledge flows rather than formal authority. Building on these results, the paper introduces the concept of latent technocentrism to describe how technocentric governance logics emerge implicitly through ecosystem configurations, even in the absence of explicit technology-driven agendas. The study contributes to smart city and urban governance scholarship by offering an actor-centric, systemic framework for analyzing urban AI and by highlighting the governance risks and policy implications associated with emerging municipal AI ecosystems.