How do people construct a sense of place out of ordinary, undifferentiated urban space? Although the intentional construction of place has received considerable attention by scholars and place professionals alike, much less attention has been devoted to the far more common problem of how people living in very un-place-like urban spaces create a sense of place out of their everyday environments. Using the rich descriptive accounts of people living in Palms, a notably unremarkable neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, this innovative new work uncovers the underlying discursive structures that inform our concepts of place.