a place where we know the cost of so much

1. Am I right that the first highlighted sentence is describing the text of Susan J. Smith's paper in this book that is a montage of citations and aphorisms from different references?

2. Does the next highlighted sentence mean "city is a place where we know the materialistic cost of it (i.e the cost of different things that are found in it or compose it, like buildings, goods, etc.) but we are not aware of the actual value of it as a phenomenon"?

Graffiti poses the question, as Susan J. Smith does in her entry for the CityA–Z lexicon of urban phenomena: ‘Whose city is this?’ In a montage of citations and aphorisms, presented in various typefaces – the fact of which highlight graffiti’s significance both as a writing of the city and as being spontaneous and fragmented in form – this is but the first of a series of key structural questions around ownership, art and vandalism. At the end Smith returns to the same question, twice; for her, the city is perhaps a ‘place where we know the cost of so much and the value of so little’