ABSTRACT
Urban studies generates theory through engaging with a diversity of urban experiences and outcomes. Whether considering the world of ‘cities’ as specific urban settlements, or the range of urbanization processes which shape these outcomes and which often stretch way beyond any specific urban territory, urban theory must build its understandings across diverse and often highly divergent outcomes. The conventional method for approaching this challenge is comparison. This chapter will set out the benefits of comparative thinking for urban studies, drawing on some classic examples of such research. It will then rehearse the limits of such traditional methods for producing knowledge about cities when the goal is to enable any city to contribute to theorization – thus, when the goal is a more global urban studies. The chapter will encourage readers to question the foundational assumptions of comparison, and using case studies will offer some pointers towards a reformulated comparative practice, where scholars can relish destabilizing existing concepts as they stretch across different cases, and where the openings for generating new concepts can emerge in any city.
