The practice of comparison is implicit in every act of imagining, representing, and studying urban experience. Urban Enigmas contributes to recent interdisciplinary interest in cities by introducing comparison as a key methodology for urban cultural analysis. Contributors, part of the collaborative research project The Culture of Cities: Montreal, Toronto, Dublin, and Berlin, address theoretical and methodological aspects of comparison, while case-studies examine the mutually constituted identities of Montreal and Toronto through examples of travel writing, public art, film festivals,...

The practice of comparison is implicit in every act of imagining, representing, and studying urban experience. Urban Enigmas contributes to recent interdisciplinary interest in cities by introducing comparison as a key methodology for urban cultural analysis. Contributors, part of the collaborative research project The Culture of Cities: Montreal, Toronto, Dublin, and Berlin, address theoretical and methodological aspects of comparison, while case-studies examine the mutually constituted identities of Montreal and Toronto through examples of travel writing, public art, film festivals,...