Breaking false boundaries in comparative urban studies: an engagement with Martin J. Murray’s Many Urbanisms

Abstract

Martin J. Murray’s book Many Urbanisms: Divergent Trajectories of Global City Building develops an elegant and simple framework for interpreting the diversity of contemporary urban outcomes. In doing so, the book represents a needed provocation to the field of comparative urban studies to move beyond debates over universality and particularity, and to develop more incisive frameworks for understanding the forces that are shaping contemporary urbanity. This response to Murray’s companion piece in this volume engages with Murray’s book by raising three specific questions for further debate: What does Murray’s framework mean for the methodology of comparative urbanism? How do we think about cities that fit uneasily within Murray’s framework? And how might Murray’s framework be brought into more direct conversation with the literature on extended urbanisation, and particularly Brenner and Schmid’s idea of ‘planetary urbanisation’?