Definitional Indifferences and Formal/Functional Equivalences: A Commentary

This commentary takes as its point of departure van Heur’s (2023) What, where and who is urban studies? On research centres in an unequal world. The paper's four concluding propositions, resting on an empirical dataset generated through the Scopus-registered 2011 to 2021 publications of the more than 1000 researchers affiliated to 30 university-housed urban studies centres, constitute an important contribution to thinking through one potential version of the future of urban studies. Such is the richness of this paper that a commentary might highlight all manner of points. I will contain myself here to two, which likely say as much about me as about the initial paper, such is the nature of these sorts of commentaries. My points relate to definitional indifferences and formal/functional equivalences.