Despite the global character of urbanisation, key arguments on a political value of the city are not compatible with the reality of urban living worldwide. Such arguments remain focused on an idealised city, based on privileged forms of urban life. This misalignment demonstrates a tension embedded within urban political theory, between the theory’s goal of creating normative judgments towards global phenomena and a methodological commitment to grounded experiences as a basis of such judgments. While existing urban and political literature suggests strategies to expand the scope of experiences that ground the theory, these strategies do not successfully overcome this tension. Consequently, the article argues for a comparative turn, that focuses on inhabitants as normative agents and engages in a contextual comparison of grounded ideals. This strategy enables to acknowledge pluralism of urban ideals, overcomes the mentioned above tension, and has consequences for other normative theories interested in an interplay between local and international.
