Robinson reformats comparison from a technique for controlling difference into a mode of urban theorisation. Her central proposition is that concepts of the urban can be generated from anywhere if comparative practice works with dispersed, interconnected and heterogeneous spatialities rather than treating a limited group of northern cities as implicit norms. The iconic operation is “thinking with elsewhere”: an urban situation becomes conceptually productive through relations to multiple other contexts, not because cases are equivalent but because difference pressures concepts to become revisable. Methodologically, this expands comparison beyond matched city pairs toward a repertoire of relational, genetic and generative tactics. The paper’s theoretical contribution is consequently epistemic and geopolitical at once: it decentralises where urban theory may originate while retaining disciplined conceptual ambition. Robinson bridges comparative urbanism, postcolonial critique and methodological experimentation, providing a framework through which serial observations, routes, neighbourhoods and situated field encounters can participate in concept formation without being subordinated to a universal urban template.
URBANISM MEETS ART