Nijman’s essay converts comparison from a search for equivalence into a technique for explaining uniqueness. Focusing on Miami’s emergence as a world city, he develops “multiple individualizing comparisons” with Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Dublin. Each comparison is selected around a specific historical or structural feature rather than overall similarity. The iconic concept of “deep analogies”, adopted from Stinchcombe, identifies processes that recur across places widely separated in time and space while retaining radically different surface forms. Methodologically, the paper uses comparative historical essays as a form of triangulation: several contrasts illuminate one focal case while simultaneously generating more general propositions about world-city formation. Theoretical insight arises from the tension between analogy and its limits. State–city relations, geopolitical refuge, capital flows, regional exceptionalism and hybrid cultural identities become explanatory conditions. The paper bridges world-city theory, historical geography and comparative method by showing how place-particularity can inform rather than block generalisation.
URBANISM MEETS ART