THEORIES AND

CONCEPT OF URBAN
SOCIOLOGY
According to…
Friedrich Engels (macro-sociological)
People in preindustrial, traditional societies were generic, tribal
beings

· Rise of city was transition from barbarism to civilization

· People realize political and economic freedom, productive

specialization

· Social evolution of humans not complete until capitalism was

transformed into socialism

· Emphasis of economics and problems of inequality and conflict

Georg Simmel (1858-1918) German
(pessimistic) - micro-sociological
Considered importance of urban experience, i.e. chose to focus on
urbanism rather than urbanization, “The Metropolis and Mental Life" is an
essay detailing his views on life in the city, focusing more on social
psychology

· Unique trait of modern city is intensification of nervous stimuli with

which city dweller must cope, from rural setting where rhythm of life and
sensory imagery is more slow, habitual and even, to city with constant
bombardments of sights, sounds and smells

· Individual learns to discriminate, become rational and calculating,

develops a blasé attitude – matter-of-fact, a social reserve, a detachment,
respond with head rather than heart, don’t care and don’t get involved
Georg Simmel (1858-1918) German
(pessimistic) - micro-sociological
Urbanites highly attuned to time

· Rationality expressed in advanced economic division of labour,

and the use of money because of requirement for a universal means of
exchange

· Acknowledged freedom, transcendence of pettiness of daily

routine, new heights of personal and spiritual development but sense
of alienation could override this

· To maintain sense of individuality and not feel like cog in

machine, do something different or odd to stand out

· Social distance
Georg Simmel (1858-1918) German
(pessimistic) - micro-sociological
· Author of this concept, from which we have Bogardus Social
Distance Scale (Emery Bogardus – Chicago School)

· A complex interpretation of social interaction as forms of

distance in two ways

1. geometric form (Euclidian) and 2) a metamorphic sense, or

1. spatial and 2) symbolic

1. Euclidian and 2) imagined

1. Physical and 2) symbolic

Georg Simmel (1858-1918) German
(pessimistic) - micro-sociological
Philosophy of Money

· Economic exchange is a form of social interaction

· When monetary transactions replaced earlier forms of barter,
significant changes occurred in the form of interaction between social
actors
· Money is subject to precise division and manipulation, it permits
exact measurement of equivalents
· Money is impersonal, objects of barter are/were not
· Money replaces personal ties by impersonal relations that limited to
a specific purpose
· Shift from qualitative to quantitative appraisals
· Money increases personal freedom and fosters social
differentiation
Georg Simmel (1858-1918) German
(pessimistic) - micro-sociological
The blasé attitude

· incapacity to react to new sensations due to saturation.

· reinforced by the money economy: money—a common denominator
of all values, regardless of their individuality.
· reserve, indifference, apathy—forms of psychological protection—
become parts of the metropolitan lifestyle.
· Positive aspect of metropolitan life: reserve and detachment
produce individual freedom.
· Paradox of city life : objectivization leads to greater individualism
and subjectivism.
· [The most significant characteristic of the metropolis] “functional
extension beyond its physical boundaries”—a person’s life does not end
with the limits of his/her body and the area of his/her immediate activity.
ECOLOGICAL THEORY
During the 1920s Robert E. Park(1864–1944) and Ernest W. Burgess
(1886–1966) developed a distinctive program of urban research in the sociology department
at the University of Chicago. In numerous research projects focused on the city of Chicago, Park
and Burgess elaborated a theory of urban ecology which proposed that cities were
environments like hose found in nature, governed by many of the same forces of Darwinian
evolution that affected natural ecosystems. The most important of these forces was
competition. Park and Burgess suggested that the struggle for scarce urban resources
especially land, led to competition between groups and ultimately to the division of the urban
space into distinctive ecological niches or “natural areas” in which people shared similar social
characteristics because they were subject to the same ecological pressures.
 ECOLOGICAL THEORY
■ Theoretical premises
■ · Influence of natural sciences arguing there is a similarity between the organic and
social worlds, i.e. the idea that natural laws can be adapted to society; a form of Social
Darwinism
■ · "Web of life"--all organisms are interrelated, there exists an interdependence of
species sharing the same environment that seems to be the product of a Darwinian
struggle for existence (numbers of living organisms regulated, distribution controlled,
and balance of nature maintained where survivors of struggle find niches in physical
environment and in existing division of labour between species)

■ Symbiotic versus societal organization

■ Symbiosis: mutual interdependence between 2 or more species
■ Processes characterizing the growth and development of plant and animal communities
applied to human communities.
■ Community (plant, animal, human): defined as individual units involved in struggle and
competition in their habitat, organized and interrelated in most complex manner
Human community (city) organized on two levels:
1. Biotic or symbiotic (substructure): driven by competition, structure of city resulting from inhabitants’ competition for scar ce
resources, idea is that cities were similar to symbiotic environments
2. Cultural (superstructure): driven by communication and consensus, way of life in the city which was an adaptive response to
organization of the city resulting at the biotic level; at the cultural level city is held together by cooperation between actors.
Symbiotic society based on competition and a cultural society based on communication and consensus.
City was a super-organism containing “natural” areas taking many forms:
- ethnic enclaves
- activity related areas (business, shopping, manufacturing, residential districts, etc…)
- income groupings (middle class neighborhoods, ghettos, etc…)
- physically separated areas (rivers, airports, railroads, etc…)

Dynamics and processes of human community:

Human community is a product of the interaction of four factors to maintain biotic and social equilibrium:
1. Population
2. Material culture, i.e. technological developments
3. Nonmaterial culture, i.e. customs and beliefs
4. Natural resources of the habitat
Human societies are characterized by competition and consensus:
· Made up of interdependent individuals competing with each other for economic and territorial dominance and for
ecological niches, have competitive cooperation with its resulting economic interdependence)
· At the same time, involved in common collective actions, existence of a society presupposes a certain amount of
solidarity, consensus and common purpose
Competition: mechanism of society to regulate population and to preserve balance between competing species, gives rise to
domination, invasion and succession, also ecological principles
Domination: result of the struggle among different species
Invasion: introduction of new species would upset old balance where there would then be a struggle for dominance with a
process of succession
Succession: various stages or the orderly sequence of changes through which a biotic community passes in course of its
development, e.g. territorial succession of immigrant groups

The societal pyramid: a social order conceived as a hierarchy of levels

1. Ecological – the base
2. Economic
3. Political
4. Moral – the apex

While human communities exhibited an ecological or symbiotic order quite similar to that of nonhuman communities, they
also participated in a social or moral order that had no counterpart on the nonhuman level. Park studied the ecological order
to understand better man's moral order.
Differences between ecology and Human ecology:
· Humans are not as immediately dependent on the physical environment - largely the product of a world-wide division of
labor and systems of exchange;
· Humans by means of inventions and technical devices have a great capacity to alter the physical environment; and
· Humans have erected upon the basis of the biotic community an institutional structure rooted in custom and tradition.
Limitations of early urban ecology:
· Focus only on economic competition for land
· Oversimplification and overgeneralization