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, theatrical performances, diasporic communities, ethnic festivals, and urban media. Comparison is shown to be not only something performed by experts but a deeply embedded, everyday social practice that contributes to the mutable identities of cities. Urban Enigmas demonstrates that the accumulation of urban actions, encounters, experiences, and relationships create distinctive patterns that make it possible to recognize the particularity of cities.

Contributors include Alan Blum (York), Kieran Bonner (St. Jerome's), Jenny Burman (McGill), Jean-François Côté (Québec à Montréal), Michael Darroch (York), Nicholas DeMaria Harney (Western Australia), Kevin Dowler (York & Toronto), Dipti Gupta (Dawson College), Janine Marchessault (York), Jean-François Morissette (Québec à Montréal), and Greg Nielsen (Concordia).