What is the relationship between the specters of a Parisian convent, heroines sequestered in Gothic castles, and the loafers of the covered passageways of Paris? What is the common point between the visitors of the World Expositions, the players captivated by the neon lights of Las Vegas and the onlookers fascinated by the shopping malls? All are taken in closed places saturated with imagination, collective "dreamers", phantasmagoria. For three centuries, capital has shaped dreamlike environments that, by repressing their economic origin, order individual and collective pleasures against the backdrop of a reign of merchandise. The history of the urban space is in this sense also that of an ever more structured mobilization of our intimate desires by the architecture, until the so-called "postmodern" architecture. In the wake of Walter Benjamin's writings on nineteenth-century Paris, this essay surveys the history of urban spaces invaded by the capitalist imaginary. In this narrative, both political and aesthetic of the production of space, the reader explores in turn the Parisian passages, the first department stores, the Universal Exhibitions, the Paris of Haussmann, the theme parks (Disneyland) , shopping mall (the Mall of America) and the Las Vegas Strip.