The Synthetic City: An Introduction

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

Helena Atteneder

Helena Atteneder is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Media Studies at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Her research is interdisciplinary, combining media and communication studies with human geography. Specifically, she examines the relationships between media, places/places, mobility, and power, with a particular emphasis on methodological advances. Her recent work includes 'Maps as Media Constructs', 'Digital Placemaking in Salzburg (Austria)', 'Geospatial Ideologies of ESRI Blog Posts', and 'The Diverse Media and Mobility Practices of Commuters'.

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.