This paper introduces a special issue section of cultural geographies in practice on Performing Urban Archives. The section discusses the idea of seeing the city as an archive as a method to examine the various social processes through which our environment is produced. Performing Urban Archives opens up a field of inquiry that takes on an explorative approach. Theoretical reflections are here combined with practice-based experiments that emphasise creative discoveries, which may provide new ways for thinking and writing about how we inhabit urban space.