ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the recent historiography of a number of connected fields and approaches: the urban history of science, interurban knowledge exchange, and global urban history. Four recent volumes, co-edited by the author, structure the material and in particular the conceptual challenges that emerge. The chapter moves from the focus on an individual city toward a comparative perspective between urban spaces, then toward an interurban and eventually a global approach. The complex and historically fluid relationship between the categories of periphery and center, of province and metropolis serves as a red thread.
