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.