AI-generated visuals of car-free US cities help improve support for sustainable policies

Americans are often reluctant to support policies that aim to meaningfully change transportation. Here we show how new techniques from artificial intelligence can be harnessed to increase public support for green policies. We use text-to-image generative AI models to create re-imagined, car-free versions of various streets in America and find that across two large-scale survey studies (N = 3,129), viewing these re-imaginations significantly increases support for a hypothetical sustainable transport bill. Picturing positive changes resulting from greener transport policies can be more effective than trying to shift climate beliefs, often related to party affiliations. A study shows how AI pictures of future car-free cities enhanced Americans’ willingness to support more sustainable transport policies.