This chapter introduces the key theoretical parameters (equity, ideology, and utopia) deployed in relation to urban texts in the studies that compose the present volume. In an opening section, we theorize the co-presence of utopian and ideological elements alongside a question of equity in urban representation, and argue that attention to the relations between these aspects is of relevance the growing interdisciplinary field of literary urban studies. The existence of ambivalence and slippages in the relations between ideas of fairness as equity and as aesthetic ideal is argued to be of direct relevance to the problems of textual representation and interpretation as regards the urban. In the second and third sections, we outline the development of a utopian problematic, in terms both of a set of textual practices and as a critical utopian method, as relevant to the theoretical and methodological preoccupations visible across the different chapters in the collection. In the final section, we outline the organizational principles of the volume, and place the individual contributions in relation to each other and the overarching themes of the book.