Can urban research be cumulative?

Abstract

Urban research is excellent at generating theories, concepts, and interpretive vocabularies. But it has been less successful at explaining how these theories might accumulate, how they should be compared, and how we know when one explanation improves upon another. This editorial asks whether urban research can be cumulative without reducing the field's theoretical plurality. Building from recent debates on the Chicago School and the revanchist city, it argues that urban theory rarely develops through simple refutation or paradigmatic replacement. More often, theories are inherited, criticized, reconstructed, and redeployed under changed historical and geographical conditions. Drawing on debates in the philosophy of science, and especially on Frank Ramsey's pragmatist account of belief and explanation, the editorial proposes a modest comparative ethic for urban research. The goal is not theoretical unification, but a more disciplined practice of asking what theories explain, under what conditions they apply, what mechanisms they privilege, and how they differ from rival accounts. Urban research becomes cumulative when disagreement clarifies rather than merely multiplies explanation.