The Synthetic City: An Introduction

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

Sara Trentham-Black

Sara Trentham-Black is a PhD student and lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Her research interests include cultural governance, datafication, technology, and place. Her PhD explores the impact of datafication on small cultural organisations and how organisations navigate the relationship between funding, policy and data. She has also worked with City of Doncaster Council as a critical friend to the delivery of their cultural strategy, and is part of a multidisciplinary team delivering a three-year project to develop learning about Creative Health Boards.

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.