We are investigating ways of understanding and representing the digital city as a space, repository and network. Our database project, TRANS.ACT 1.3, a preliminary repository of multimedia urban artifacts, raises questions about how to synthesize data in order to generate material that advances our understanding of the city and the media we use to describe it. Included in our investigation is a consideration of how the defining attributes of new media both code the city and change the relations between image, text and sound. As a platform for collaboration and experimentation, and a medium for creative dissemination, the database is an ideal tool for analytic research. The urban database establishes an ecology of communication, a space for incubation, and a staging ground from which to launch interventions.