Written in the shadow of war, City of Panic argues that cities everywhere have been the dedicated target of political and technological terror throughout the 20th century. The wanton erasure of the past, the construction of identikit places, the proliferation of gated-communities, the ever-widening net of surveillance, the privatization of what was public. In this globalized and militarized "everywhere," all citizens are becoming one citizen--saturated, standardized and synchronized--ever more reliant on a media fabricating a world of fear. For the panic of the 21st century is simply the final phase of the pincer movement. Place-less, media-fed, panic-struck - welcome to the desert of the real.