This paper contributes to ongoing debates around the nature, composition and production of cities in an era of increasing globalisation. Arguing that we need to move beyond relational urban conceptualisations, we sketch out a view of cities as dynamic and unstable flow-places in which the respective qualities of flows and places cannot be meaningfully disarticulated. We use the notion of 'commutation' to capture this idea of cities as a communicational nexus in which multiple actors perform, manage, undergo and contest a variety of socio-technical operations which interconnect flows and places. Three constitutive components and implications of this commutation process are identified through which the socio-technical practices and outcomes of urban production processes are constructed and contested. We work through the heuristic potential of the flow-place notion through a focus on the shifting practices, power relations and transcalar circulations in commercial office space development.