Modes of Inter-Urban Comparisons and Theory Building

This chapter discusses the recent “comparative turn” across urban studies and considers what it means for theory building. There are different elements to this “turn” and this chapter emphasises three. First, it argues that the explicit and implicit comparison of cities have long characterised urban theory building in sub-fields in, for example, geography, history, planning, political science and sociology. Second, it argues that this “turn” has not occurred in an intellectual vacuum; rather the form it has taken, particularly in geography and planning, bears the imprint of the emergence of relational conceptualisations of space. Third, and finally, the chapter argues among those involved in urban policy and politics, comparison appears to have emerged as a mode of governance. That is, those who govern cities using the comparison with, and the referencing of, other cities as a strategy to govern.