Preface

Almost as soon as I had finished writing Ordinary Cities in 2005, people started asking me how such an approach could be operationalised. How exactly could all cities be treated on the same analytical plane as sites for thinking the urban? At times this seemed a ridiculous expectation, and the impossibility of bringing informality, for example, into a wider urban studies context provoked laughter in more than one job interview panel I sat in front of. As that book was finished at about the same time as my son was born, I didn't have an opportunity to discuss my emerging response to this (very good) question at great length for a while, and it took some years to bring my explorations on this topic to fruition. An early provocation to consider comparison as a starting point (presented at Durham in 2007) came to publication in 2011 (Robinson 2011), learning from assessments which had gone before and alongside (Pickvance 1987; Nijman 2007; Ward 2010; MacFarlane 2010). I have worked on this theme for over a decade now, alongside the growing up of my son, and in concert with some substantial empirical experiments in comparative research (e.g. Robinson et al. 2020).

I have enjoyed immensely puzzling over the issues which the reformatting of comparison for global urban studies entails. It has stretched me in ways which have been pure pleasure, including learning to read Gilles Deleuze and thinking with Walter Benjamin, returning to the feminist work which inspired the post-colonial critique of urban studies which crystallised for me in the 1990s in Durban, and engaging with a new generation of decolonial and feminist thinkers. My period of working at the Open University was inspiring and set in train the work for this book. As with others of us who came within the orbit of John Allen and the group assembled there in the early 2000s, we learnt to think spatially, to read widely, to 'theorise' and to build collegiality as a foundation for intellectual innovation. I owe John and my other colleagues at the OU a great debt. I am especially thinking at this time of the generosity and exceptional intellectual capacity of Clive Barnett, so sadly lost to us this year. His work and life will be an inspiration to many. He was a much valued colleague and friend.

At UCL I have benefitted from an amazingly rich environment of urbanists who are open to joining in with intriguing seminars and discussions, and where people who work on and come from so many different cities can find each other on a day-to-day basis. This goes just as well for colleagues across London colleges who work in a very close physical proximity, and form a fantastic community for expanding understandings of global urban experiences. The demands of the UK academy are a very long way from the pressured times of colleagues in so many places, including my alma mater in Durban. My colleagues there, Brij Maharaj (a long influence on my academic practice) and Orli Bass, teach with one additional physical geographer over 700 first-year students, and hundreds of senior students. The work loads are excruciating. The competitive and increasingly febrile environment in the UK notwithstanding (staff are overstretched and ambitious; students are customers with debt weighing heavily on their life plans), and despite the fact that after twenty years I feel that my 'home' is still Durban, I have been highly privileged in my career trajectory in the UK. At UCL I have found colleagues who are often kind, sociable and supportive in sharing tasks. I so value them, and particularly mention Pushpa Arabindoo, Andrew Harris, Ben Page and Tatiana Thieme, Ben Campkin, Clare Melhuish, Matthew Gandy, Charlotte Lemanski, Michael Edwards, Catalina Ortiz, Colin Marx, Barbara Lipietz, Fulong Wu, Jonathan Rokem. You made going to work a pleasure and have taught me much.

This book has been a long time in preparation - a rich decade of puzzling and practice, including some stimulating collaborations both in academia, with colleagues and students, and in the everyday politics of the urban, primarily in London and, for personal reasons - childcare! - to a much lesser extent than I would wish in Johannesburg and Cape Town. In the process I have incurred many debts and learnt much from others. I acknowledge them at the end of this preface. I was especially delighted to be a small part of the early days of the African Centre for Cities, and so excited to see all that has been achieved there. I count Edgar Pieterse, Susan Parnell, Vanessa Watson and Sophie Oldfield amongst the most influential and energising urban scholars, both in the wider world, and for me personally. Thank you. While UK academia is certainly a privileged place to find myself working when the music stopped on the mid-career roundabout, the last decade has involved an intense period of work, both at work and domestically, both physically and emotionally. Thank you to all those who have been so supportive in these years - and not least to my lovely neighbours in the midst of lockdown. For distanced coffees in the street, emergency shopping, accordion playing, and always a kind word, thank you!In the UK academy publishing needs to happen sooner rather than later, despite whatever life brings along, and so in a strategy I learnt from my valued mentor at the Open University, John Allen, I have written this book in sections over this time. Luckily it has sustained a consistency of argument and analysis. Some readers might be familiar with the two core chapters - 2 and 4 - published in 2011 and 2016. But the book format gives an opportunity to build an extensive and wide-ranging argument over a lot of material, and to bring forward what I hope is a useful and perhaps distinctive approach to enlarging the comparative practice of urban studies, and to thinking the urban, globally.

Thanks, then, to those who have been companions and inspirations at different moments in what turned out to be a lifetime journey: Ola Söderström (who commented extensively on the book proposal), Ludovic Halbert, Matthias Bernt, Phil Harrison, Alison Todes, Fulong Wu, Maliq Simone, Filip de Boeck, Edgar Pieterse, Sue Parnell, Sophie Oldfield, Rob Morrell, Jane M. Jacobs, James Sidaway, Tim Bunnell, John Allen, Patrick Le Galès, Clive Barnett, Richard Ballard, Garth Myers, Oren Yiftachel, Juile Ren, Hanna Hilbrandt, Loretta Lees, Hyun Shin, Monica Degen . how lucky to be part of your generous worlds. Especially thank you to Phil Harrison and Fulong Wu for sharing in some comparative experiments, it was such a pleasure to work with you both, and it would not have been possible to write this book without your support. And to others who have embarked on new comparative initiatives, Evance Mwathunga, Wilbard Kombe, George Owusu and Sylvia Croese, thank you for taking the leap, and for enduring the challenges of working collaboratively in COVID times. To those students (and adopted students) at UCL whose comparative experiments inspired me so much - it has been a privilege to share an intellectual adventure with you all: Frances Brill, Alvaro Jimenez Sanchez, Susana Neves Alves, Aidan Mosselson, Astrid Wood, Hui-Chun-Liu, Shaun Teo, Rita Lambert, Azadeh Mashayekhi, Camila Saraiva, Ana McMillin, Gumeç Karamuk, Varvara Karipidou, Lubaina Mirza.

A number of people have commented on different elements of the book - thank you so much for your insights. I have also been lucky enough to have a few careful readers of the text. Garth Myers has been a consistent intellectual companion over many years, and I have learnt much from him for this book. Maliq Simone has read quite a few different draft papers - and commented within hours or days, in such a generous way. I can't always follow him on his often incandescent intellectual paths, but I am always so inspired and admiring. Talja Blokland read closely and commented in detail on a draft text - her responses coming from a different disciplinary direction were very instructive and also inspired me, although I was not able to do everything she suggested. Walter Nicholls as the series editor made extensive and very helpful comments across the entire text, thank you for your generous oversight of the process of producing this book. And the Editorial Board of the Studies in Urban and Social Change series were encouraging and enthusiastic all the way. Raphael de Kadt deserves a special mention for inspiring me to read and think when we were colleagues together in Durban. More practically, from his new ventures in photography in Johannesburg he kindly contributed one of the images in the text. Jacqueline Scott has been a steady, positive and supportive publishing partner at Wiley-Blackwell for the decade I have been involved with this series, and also for this book. It is always a pleasure to work with you, Jacqueline, and to explore Christmas markets and chat over a glass of wine. I also would like to thank Robert Rojek for his ongoing publishing support, although working together was not to be on this occasion.

I would like to acknowledge the funders of two research projects which supported the work for this book: the ESRC for an Urban Transformations grant ES/N006070/1, "Governing the Future City: A comparative analysis of governance innovations in large scale urban developments in Shanghai, London, Johannesburg" and the European Research Council (Advanced Grant 834999) for Making Africa Urban: the transcalar politics of large-scale urban development.

Throughout the writing of this book Christian Schmid has been an everyday intellectual interlocutor, perhaps in the Lefebvrian sense of the everyday as the fullness of all possibility, and a source of constant...