Robinson reframes comparative urbanism as a central theoretical practice for global urban studies. Her starting problem is the mismatch between an urban world marked by dispersed, interconnected and heterogeneous processes and a geography of theory historically dominated by a narrow set of northern cases. The chapter’s iconic idea is that concepts of the urban must be built across difference, with attention to whose experiences and scholarly voices are authorised to shape theory. Comparative work becomes a means of placing distinctive urban contexts into analytical conversation without reducing them to one developmental sequence. The theoretical contribution is a conception of urban knowledge as necessarily revisable, located and globally extensible. Methodologically, Robinson mobilises the comparative imagination as an open repertoire that includes relational, genetic and generative comparison. The chapter bridges postcolonial critique, urban epistemology and comparative method, showing how the act of comparison can redistribute conceptual authority and make urban theory responsive to a world in which no single city can serve as the norm.