The Synthetic City: An Introduction

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

Marcos Dias

Marcos Dias is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communications, Dublin City University. His research expertise focuses on the social and spatial impact of communication technologies and urban infrastructure on citizen well-being. He is the author of The Machinic City: Media, Performance and Participation (Manchester University Press, 2021).

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.

Screenshot of one of the short films from 2097: We Made Ourselves Over by Blast Theory. Source: Blast Theory.

no. 3, Q & A, vol. 6July 8, 2021<October 5, 2021

The Mediapolis Q&A: Marcos Dias’s The Machinic City

Tanya Lokot and Marcos Dias

In this installment of our Q&A series, digital media and society scholar and Editorial Board member Tanya Lokot interviews Marcos Dias on his recent book The Machinic City: Media, Performance and Participation.