This paper aims to draw the necessary distinctions in order to contribute to identify, among all the objects that populate our world of perception, the urbanist´s own object of study. In systemic jargon, it aims to distinguish that elemental unity that ensures that a phenomenon is an urban one and none other. This, in order to help to distinguish in turn the urbanist´s own field of action. It calls into question the widespread belief that this object of study might be the already built city as current academic and professional tradition dictates and postulates instead the study of the urban protophenomenon-alternatively, of the archetypal citizen-as a genuinely urban route for the attainment of urban knowledge.