ABSTRACT
Postcolonial critiques of urban studies have sought to expand its horizons to respond to the global and globalised nature of the urban and decolonise its concepts and practices. Starting from the practical challenges of building knowledge of the urban within the rubric of a more global urban studies and in response to the unruly and often divergent nature of contemporary urbanisation, all urbanists confront the challenge of thinking the urban in a “world of cities” and thus of building concepts of the urban across difference. The chapter suggests that comparative urbanism adds up to a theory of the urban. The concept “urban” can only ever exist as emergent and multiple, in a state of constant, strong revisability.
