Never before have so many people lived in cities, and a global architecture is making metropolises increasingly similar. At the same time, politicians, urban planners, and cultural creators are actively working to give their city a distinctive identity in the media-driven competition for residents, investors, and funding. In fact, cities differ significantly, and these differences influence how childhood, poverty, or sexual orientation are experienced. Martina Löw takes the city as an object of knowledge seriously and develops the thesis that urban developments can only be sufficiently explained and effectively influenced if one understands the internal logic and emotional structure of cities, which are captured in urban images and reproduced in everyday routines. This is illustrated with numerous empirical examples.