The Synthetic City: An Introduction

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

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.

September 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.

September 7, 2026<September 9, 2026

What If AI Systems Self-Operate Our Cities?

Leandry Jieutsa

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.

September 7, 2026<September 9, 2026

Civic Urban AI: Fostering Transformative Pedagogies for Human-Urban-AI Entanglements

Luke Hespanhol, Michiel de Lange and Nanna Verhoeff

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.

September 7, 2026<September 9, 2026

Real-Time Is Too Late: NEOM’s Digital Air and the Pre-emptive Synthetic City

Mehdi Ghassemi and David Murakami Wood

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 the that brand has receded.

September 7, 2026<September 9, 2026

Fictions of Frontier AI in Cities: Living and Learning with Less-Than-Human Intelligences

Miguel Valdez

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.

September 7, 2026<September 9, 2026

Synthetic Nights: Machine and Human Learning in 24-Hour Cities

Jess Reia

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.

September 7, 2026<September 9, 2026

Coding Urban Intelligences: Thoughts on an AI-Enabled Digital Twin of a Boston Neighborhood

Eric Gordon, Loretta Lees, Carolyn L. White and Chang Xiao

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.

September 7, 2026<September 9, 2026

Diffused History: Generative AI and the Crisis of Architectural Memory

Joel McKim

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.

September 7, 2026<September 9, 2026

Orbital Urbanism and the Infrastructures of Urban AI Synthesis

Fran Meissner

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.

June 15, 2026<September 2, 2026

Introduction: Mediapolis at 10 and Beyond

Adam Ochonicky

Adam Ochonicky introduces this issue’s dossier, “Mediapolis at 10 and Beyond,” and shares some updates about the journal.

June 15, 2026<June 15, 2026

Publication as Conversation

Erica Stein

Erica Stein traces out how multiple conceptions of scholarly “conversation” shaped the founding of Mediapolis and remain central to the journal’s identity.

June 15, 2026<June 15, 2026

Ten Years On: Reflecting on the Future of Mediapolis in a Dynamic Media Environment

Brendan Kredell

Brendan juxtaposes Mediapolis’s founding vision—to occupy a space between blog and peer-reviewed journal—with the current media environment in which social media, single-authored newsletters, and platforms like podcasts, Discord, and Substack have reshaped notions of “middle-state publishing.