Do individual cities matter? Negotiating the particular

Abstract

Abstract In this article, I reflect on how urban scholars negotiate between the general and the particular not by turning to sampling strategies or statistical techniques but by situating the city in a favourable rhetorical space. In effect, they attempt to close the gap theoretically. My substantive and specific focus is urban scholarship that addresses individual cities and that frames that city either as a laboratory in which to do urban research, a lens through which to see other cities, or as the archetype for a school of urban studies. I concentrate mainly on the work of US urban scholars.