This article investigates the relationship between the city, the subject, and the production of meaning by posing the central question: “Is the citizen the author of the city, or its reader?” It argues that common dichotomies regarding the citizen’s role in the creation and reading of the city are insufficient to explain the complexity of urban meaning-making processes. By examining the metaphor of “the city as text” and its reliance on literary and semiotic theories, the article contends that although this metaphor allows for understanding the city as a multilayered and coded space, it can be misleading, as the city—unlike a literary text—is a processual phenomenon intertwined with power, economy, and politics. Drawing on Foucault’s analysis of the “function of the author,” the article shows that the author should not be reduced to a specific individual or institution; rather, it is a set of discursive and structural mechanisms that delineate the possible and impossible within the city. Accordingly, the citizen cannot occupy the position of the author, nor can they be reduced to a passive reader. The citizen is a writer of the city, yet their writing is positional, dispersed, and tactical, always occurring within the constraints defined by the “function of the author.” The citizen is also a reader of the city, as their experience and interpretation constitute a crucial part of meaning-making. The city, therefore, emerges in the tension among three positions: the author as a structural function, the citizen as a limited writer, and the citizen as a reader. Understanding the city requires analyzing these relationships and intermediary distances rather than relying on simplistic dichotomies. The article demonstrates that urban critique is valid only when it unveils the mechanisms of power and discourses that shape the conditions for narration and the production of meaning.