Nijman’s response to Jamie Peck argues that comparative urbanism is theoretically necessary because contemporary urbanisation is increasingly interrelated, not merely because cities display striking variety. Comparison therefore belongs to the systemic condition of planetary urbanisation rather than to an optional search for exceptional cases. The paper’s key contribution is a dialectic between conceptual definition and openness to emergent formations: researchers need workable definitions of the urban and theoretically grounded case selection, while remaining prepared to revise those definitions when unfamiliar urban processes disrupt them. Nijman also insists that comparison requires movement between induction and deduction and a much broader empirical geography than the Anglo-American field has historically admitted. Methodologically, the commentary combines epistemological argument with a political-economic orientation to city–state relations and uneven urbanisation. It bridges classical comparative inquiry with postcolonial and planetary urban debates, offering a compact defence of comparison as the means by which urban theory can remain both generalisable and responsive to geographical difference.
