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Sex workers are frequently portrayed as symbols of urban deviance and decline, yet rarely positioned as agents whose labour sustains captivating urban imaginaries and whose lives are affected by transformations in entertainment-driven cities. GLOWS addresses these gaps by focusing on two case studies: Las Vegas, USA, and the Adriatic Tourist District, Italy—two contexts where sex work is illegal or formally unrecognized yet central to local imaginaries. Through ethnographic methods, the project pursues three objectives: 1) to advance a critical understanding of how sexual commerce has been both mobilized within, and adapted to, urban branding strategies in the two case study locations; 2) to analyse how urban transformations, whether through rebranding or decline, shape sex workers’ everyday lives; and 3) to examine how sex workers’ perspectives challenge dominant visual representations of the two contexts. By centring sex workers’ situated knowledge, GLOWS bridges conversations in urban studies on attractiveness and branding, ruin and decay, geographies of sexuality, and informal/illegal economies. While these domains are often address separately they share important stakes in understanding the contradictions of contemporary urban transformation.