Ontological locationalities: Moving beyond North–South binary and interrogating what gets studied

Recent calls in urban studies emphasize the need for inquiry to look beyond North Atlantic circuits of knowledge production, encouraging research to venture beyond the metropolis. These calls advocate engagement with empirical and theoretical insights from multiple elsewheres that have been conceptualized as peripheries. In this article, I contend that more studies from peripheries would not alter the North Atlantic knowledge hegemony, as the ontological locationality of these endeavours remain metropolitan. I argue that we first require distinctive formats, methods, and theories to discuss where our concerns arise from: it is crucial to recentre and re-contextualize uniquely positioned researchers within the particular circumstances of contemporary urbanization processes. Thereafter, I propose the possibilities for pluriversal urban theories and dialogues, to be able to at least start the process of dislocating the ontological hegemony of the metropolis, which embodies the power to decide what is there to be known from these peripheries.