The essay argues that various forms of urban popular culture function as key place-making practices in that they medially and discursively prefigure the perception and evaluation of urban spaces. Using examples from popular music – Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” – and street art – in this case the notorious Banksy – we exemplify potential functions of urban popular culture as a place-making practice: The evaluation of urban spaces, we argue, functions both by means of a discursive staging, which – often in strongly normative ways – offers recipients patterns and templates of evaluation, and through various practices of interactively appropriating urban spaces, which again shape the perception and evaluation of these spaces. Also taking into account the discourse about urban popular culture and its evaluation as a practice of distinction (sensu Bourdieu) in the generation and propagation of different urban habitus, the essay concludes that urban popular culture functions as both a practice of and a resource in the negotiation of established or emergent notions of ‘urbanity’.