Comics as a Lens for Urban Research? Challenges and Potential of a Representational and Analytical Tool

This chapter argues that comics can function as both a representational and an analytical tool for urban research, helping urban scholars grapple with the complexity of spatially and temporally situated social phenomena. Drawing on a range of graphic novels and comics journalism, it outlines five key affordances. First, the combination of words and images can render the multisensory, material texture of everyday urban life more vividly than text alone. Second, comics enable the visualization of multiple temporalities on the same page, supporting analyses that connect longue durée histories, medium-term cycles, and lived experience. Third, the medium can shift between top-down structural forces and bottom-up situated practices, interweaving personal narratives with broader political and socio-spatial dynamics. Fourth, the framed and sequential grammar of comics fosters researcher reflexivity, making visible the partiality of observation and the constructed nature of data. Finally, the chapter discusses limits and challenges—especially issues of accessibility, production costs, the risk of oversimplification, and the possibility of reinforcing stereotypes—arguing that comics should be treated as a complementary methodology requiring transparency and analytical rigor.