There have been calls to broaden urban theory to incorporate learnings from the Southern or ordinary cities (periphery). These calls are often placed as a counter to the hegemony of the Northern cities (metropolis), which have long been the sites for producing theory. If the metropolis is a concept to describe clustering of power and knowledge, then geographical located-ness of this metropolis in the North is theoretically stifling. Therefore, we need to investigate the formation of metropolises within various cities, to study them in their own right, rather than merely pitching them against the northern cities or theory. Building on the qualitative study of street food sellers, users, and producers, I illustrate contrasting narratives from Colombo and Delhi. I take the lunch-packet sector in Colombo to develop narratives of the city and read it alongside those of the momos (dumpling) sector in Delhi. Through these everyday urban narratives, I build a set of urban imageries, distinct in both cities, and compare them with their planning histories via master plans. Using this juxtaposition, I argue that for the city to be rendered outside of the North’s knowledge hegemony (i.e., for Southern theory), we need to have an interiorized ontological probing.

有人呼吁拓宽城市理论，以吸收南方或普通城市（周边）的经验。这些呼吁经常被用来对抗北方城市（大都市）的霸权，而北方城市长期以来一直是产生理论的场所。如果说大都市是描述权力和知识聚集的概念，那么从理论上讲，这个大都市在北部的地理位置是令人窒息的。因此，我们需要研究各个城市中大都市的形成，以自身的方式研究它们，而不是仅仅将它们与北方城市或理论相提并论。在对街头食品销售商，使用者和生产者进行定性研究的基础上，我说明了来自科伦坡和德里的对比叙述。德里的莫莫斯（饺子）行业。通过这些日常的城市叙事，我建立了一套在两个城市中都不同的城市形象，并通过总体规划将它们与规划历史进行了比较。通过这种并置，我认为要使城市在北方的知识霸权之外（即，对于南方理论而言），就需要进行内部化的本体论探究。