Dossier editors: Scott Rodgers, Helena Atteneder, Lou Brandner, Marcos Dias, Diogo Pereira Henriques and Sara Trentham-Black
Scott Rodgers, Helena Atteneder, Lou Brandner, Marcos Dias, Diogo Pereira Henriques and Sara Trentham-Black, The Synthetic City: An Introduction
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.
Leandry Jieutsa, What If AI Systems Self-Operate Our Cities?
What happens when municipal AI stops assisting decisions and starts making them? Drawing on scenario-based interviews with eleven Quebec city managers, Leandry Jieutsa traces a drift toward “self-operating governance”, where officials supervise algorithmic infrastructures rather than run them.
Luke Hespanhol, Michiel de Lange and Nanna Verhoeff, Civic Urban AI: Fostering Transformative Pedagogies for Human-Urban-AI Entanglements
Decided, datafied without consent, and left out of debate: Luke Hespanhol, Michiel de Lange and Nanna Verhoeff identify a “triple actionability gap” in urban AI, and propose Civic Urban AI as a pedagogical counter-narrative.
Mehdi Ghassemi and David Murakami Wood, Real-Time Is Too Late: NEOM’s Digital Air and the Pre-emptive Synthetic City
NEOM promised a city with its own “digital air”. Mehdi Ghassemi and David Murakami Wood read the cognitive-city’s promotional artefacts to show how atmosphere, consent and the digital twin were settled before any resident arrived, and what persists now that the brand has receded.
Miguel Valdez, Fictions of Frontier AI in Cities: Living and Learning with Less-Than-Human Intelligences
Not HAL 9000, but an icebox on wheels delivering groceries. Miguel Valdez argues that utopian and dystopian imaginaries of superhuman AI do the same work, drawing attention from the narrowly intelligent robots already negotiating city streets, and from what it takes to make meaning with them.
Jess Reia, Synthetic Nights: Machine and Human Learning in 24-Hour Cities
If the night is barely seen, can it be understood by algorithms? Jess Reia argues that the opacities and refusals of nocturnal life expose the limits of machine learning, and makes the case for expanding what counts as data after dark.
Eric Gordon, Loretta Lees, Carolyn White and Chang Xiao, Coding Urban Intelligences: Thoughts on an AI-Enabled Digital Twin of a Boston Neighborhood
What would a digital twin look like if it were designed to stay incomplete? Eric Gordon, Loretta Lees, Carolyn White and Chang Xiao imagine an AI agent-enabled twin of Boston’s Fenway neighbourhood, built from community conversation rather than sensor feeds.
Joel McKim, Diffused History: Generative AI and the Crisis of Architectural Memory
Generative AI turns architectural history into style. Joel McKim traces how image models produce a “generic pastness” that suits luxury renders and reactionary city-building alike, and how some practitioners are pushing them somewhere else entirely.
Fran Meissner, Orbital Urbanism and the Infrastructures of Urban AI Synthesis
The synthetic city has an orbital dimension. Fran Meissner follows the chain of AI mediations linking Earth-observing satellites to urban planning, arguing that what can be sensed from orbit increasingly determines what can be acted on below.