The Synthetic City: An Introduction

Rodgers, Scott, Helena Atteneder, Lou Therese Brandner, Marcos Dias, Diogo Pereira Henriques and Sara Trentham-Black

Diogo P. Henriques

Diogo P. Henriques is an independent consultant, creative technologist, designer, and researcher based in Barcelona, Spain, working for international organisations, universities, and practices in Europe and Asia. Recently, he has been with the Open Data Charter and the Inclusive Policy Lab of UNESCO, working on projects funded by Erasmus+ and Creative Europe Programmes of the European Commission, among others. Since 2024, he has been the Communications Officer for the Media Cities and Space section of ECREA, and, since 2019, corresponding editor of the Nexus Network Journal and of the book series Mathematics and the Built Environment, published by Springer.

Angular fragments of a nineteenth-century city plan, its regular chamfered blocks cut apart and rotated to different angles, radiating from a dense dark cluster at the centre. Hundreds of fine plotted lines, some red and blue, run across and through them: horizontal and vertical bundles, long sweeping curves, and stray marks trailing off toward the empty white edges.

Dossiers, no. 2, vol. 11September 7, 2026<September 9, 2026

The Synthetic City: An Introduction

Scott Rodgers, Helena Atteneder, Lou Therese Brandner, Marcos Dias, Diogo P. Henriques and Sara Trentham-Black

AI has arrived in cities, but rarely as spectacle. This introduction to The Synthetic City dossier asks how agency gets attributed, what AI models learn and thereby settle in advance, and why the synthetic city may turn out to be more banal than dramatic.