Peck intervenes in the comparative urbanism debate at the point where postcolonial critique, political economy and methodological pluralism threaten to fragment urban theory into mutually insulated particularisms. “Cities beyond Compare?” argues that the rejection of universalising models should not entail the abandonment of comparative theoretical work. Its iconic idea is a multipolar and relational urbanism able to move across difference without treating one city as the normative template for all others. Peck’s theoretical contribution is reconstructive: he asks how comparison can sustain dialogue among divergent traditions while remaining attentive to uneven development and historically specific urban processes. The methodological operation is to treat comparison as an active mode of theorisation rather than a technical stage of case selection. The paper bridges critical urban political economy and postcolonial urban studies by insisting that difference must generate new concepts, not merely deconstruct old ones, and that comparison remains indispensable to explaining processes that are simultaneously global and differentiated.