Conference Agenda

Smart city data infrastructures largely reinforce anthropocentric paradigms, neglecting the entangled relationships that shape more-than-human worlds. This paper explores synthetic data as a transformative tool to address these omissions, offering alternative ways to represent missing non-human perspectives. Through a research-through-design approach, we present Kin Bank: a speculative interface that uses synthetic data to generate poetic, transactional representations between human and non-human actors. Adopting the metaphor of a shared bank account, the system foregrounds ecological and financial interdependencies while challenging reductionist data practices. Findings from a user study show how synthetic data can surface unseen relationships, embrace ecological complexity, and provoke critical reflection. Rather than prediction, synthetic data is used as a speculative medium to produce “productive uncertainty” and foster new ways of understanding more-than-human entanglements. We argue that speculative design powered by synthetic data offers a pathway toward more inclusive, relational, and imaginative representations of urban ecologies and regenerative futures.