"Sharon Zukin has written a penetrating and nuanced portrait of the displacement of planning by marketing in our cities, of the ways in which they extend and increasingly depend on the spurious automations of culture that have become America's most important product. What makes her book especially rare, though, are her recordings of the ways these cultural superposition's reverberate in the life of the street, the negotiations and compromises forced on the real lives of people harried by this symbolic economy and its seemingly inexorable co-optation of the spaces of public life." Michael Sorkin

"Urban culture is the new combat zone and Sharon Zukin is our most brilliant war correspondent, whose despatches include a bizarre visit to Disney University, a behind-the-scenes exposé of chic restaurants, and the ultimate New York shopping trip." Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz