The sociological study of cities and urban life is known as urban sociology. Examining the social, historical, political, cultural, economic, and environmental factors that have influenced metropolitan environments, urban sociology is one of the field’s oldest subdisciplines. (Source: ) Urban sociologists study a wide range of topics, including poverty, racial residential segregation, economic development, migration and demographic trends, gentrification, homelessness, blight and crime, urban decline, and neighborhood changes and revitalization.
Like most sociologists, they do this by using statistical analysis, observation, archival research, U.S. census data, social theory, interviews, and other methods. Urban planning and policy-making are shaped and guided by the crucial insights that urban sociological study offers. [/2]
Urban sociologists like Karl Marx, Ferdinand Tönnies, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel studied and theorized the economic, social, and cultural processes of urbanization and its effects on social alienation, class formation, and the creation or destruction of individual and collective identities. These sociologists’ work forms the philosophical basis of contemporary urban sociology.
Early in the 20th century, a group of sociologists and scholars at the University of Chicago built upon and examined these theoretical underpinnings. The research on Chicago’s inner city conducted by Robert Park, Louis Wirth, and Ernest Burgess, which came to be known as the Chicago School of Sociology, transformed not just the goal of urban studies in sociology .
Development and rise of Urban Sociology
Through the work of a group of sociologists and theorists at the University of Chicago from the 1910s through the 1940s, known as the Chicago School of Sociology, urban sociology gained prominence among academics in North America. The Chicago School of Sociology employed ethnographic research along with sociological and anthropological theory to study how people interact as individuals, communities, and groups within urban social systems.[3–5]
Members of the Chicago School placed more focus on micro-scale social interactions, which attempted to give subjective meaning to how people interact within structural, cultural, and social constraints, in contrast to the mostly macro-based sociology that had characterized prior subfields. Urban sociology and the notion of symbolic interaction developed together during this time, serving as the foundation for numerous methodologically innovative ethnographies.
The Chicago School’s researchers initially set out to address a single question: how did the Industrial Revolution’s surge in urbanization add to the severity of today’s social issues? Chicago was the focus of sociologists because it was a blank slate for the state, having grown from a 10,000-person hamlet in 1860 to an urban metropolis with over two million residents in the following fifty years.
Many of the social difficulties of the time, such as concentrated homelessness, unfavorable living conditions, and the low pay and long hours required of the large number of recently arrived European immigrants, also emerged with this expansion.
Furthermore, contrary to the predictions of early expansionist theorists, Chicago did not expand outward towards its periphery like many other urban regions did.
Many early studies in urban sociology concentrated on the transmission of immigrants’ native culture roles and norms into new and evolving surroundings, partly because of the high concentration of first-generation immigrant families in Chicago’s inner city during the early 20th century. During this time, there was also a lot of coverage of political engagement and the growth of intercommunity groups
. Many metropolitan regions used census methodologies that made data easily accessible and kept for participating institutions like the University of Chicago. Three of the first academics of urban sociology, Park, Burgess, and McKenzie, were University of Chicago professors who created the Subculture Theories, which served to explain the frequently beneficial influence of local institutions on the development of social acceptability and community.
Evolution of the discipline
The publication of Claude Fischer’s 1975 “Toward a Theory of Subculture Urbanism” marked the beginning of the evolution and transition of sociological theory from the Chicago School. This work integrated Bourdieu’s theories of social capital and symbolic capital within the Chicago School’s invasion and succession framework to explain how cultural groups form, expand, and solidify a neighborhood.
Barry Wellman’s (1979) “The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers” further developed the theme of subcultures and groups transitioning within cities by defining the role and status of the individual, institution, and community in the urban landscape with respect to their community. Community-focused notions like “Community Lost,” “Community Saved,” and “Community Liberated” were categorized and incorporated by Wellman.
Community lost
The first of the three theories, this one was created in the late 1800s to explain the quick advancement of industrial patterns that seemed to drive a wedge between the local community and the individual. It was asserted that urbanites had networks that were “impersonal, transitory, and segmental,” retaining connections throughout a number of social networks but lacking the strong bonds that would have connected them to any one particular group.
Urban community members were consequently unable to depend on other community members for support with their requirements and were forced to rely nearly entirely on their secondary connections with people as a result of this disarray.
Community saved
The community saved argument is a critical reaction to the community lost idea, which emerged in the 1960s. It argues that multistranded links frequently evolve in loosely-knit groups over time, and that urban societies frequently have these strong ties—albeit in various ways. People, especially in low-income areas, prefer to pool resources and adapt to their surroundings in order to collectively defend themselves against structural changes.
Urban communities have a tendency to transform into “urban villages” over time, where people have close relationships with a small number of people who link them to a complex network of other urbanities within the same local area.
Community liberated
According to a cross-section of the community saved and lost arguments, the community liberated theory contends that urbanites’ weak ties to various community groups are exacerbated by high rates of residential mobility. This is because urbanites’ workplace, residence, and familial kinship groups are separated from one another.
Even Nevertheless, people are more likely to form secondary bonds in the city due to the concentrated number of locations available for contact, even if they continue to live apart from close-knit communities. The key relationships that provide the person with support in daily life are made up of encounters that are both widely distributed and loosely connected. The degree to which a person can access resources depends on the strength of the relationships they have within their community.10]
Over the past 50 years, as these theories have evolved, urban sociologists have started to focus more on examining the distinctions between urban, rural, and suburban settings. Researchers have largely discovered that urban residents tend to maintain larger spatially-dispersed networks of links than rural or suburban residents, which is consistent with the community-liberated argument.
The absence of public spaces and mobility in lower-class urban areas frequently interferes with the development of social bonds and contributes to the creation of an isolated and disjointed society. Although the high network density in the city deteriorates interpersonal relationships, it also makes it more likely that one or more members of a network will be able to supply the central support that is characteristic of smaller, closer-knit networks.
But as the theory of social networks has evolved, sociologists like Alejandro Portes and the Wisconsin model of sociological study have started to emphasize the significance of these weak relationships more and more.In [12]
While strong links are essential for offering basic services to inhabitants and creating a feeling of community, weak ties combine aspects of various cultural and economic contexts to address issues that impact a large number of people. Theorist Eric Oliver points out that the most politically engaged and frequently dependent on multicultural assistance for problem-solving are neighborhoods with extensive social networks.13]
Social scientists and urban geographers like Harvey Molotch, David Harvey, and Neil Smith started researching the layout and redevelopment of the most impoverished inner city neighborhoods as the suburban landscape took shape during the 20th century and the outer city turned into a haven for the wealthy and, later, the growing middle class.
According to their research, developers targeted impoverished neighborhoods for gentrification, uprooting inhabitants and displacing them because these communities frequently depend on close-knit local relationships for social and economic support.
In [14] Low-income citizens’ move into stable housing has frequently been facilitated by political experiments in providing semi-permanent housing and structural support, such as Community Development Block Grant programs or Section 8 housing.
In a September 2015 issue of “City & Community(C&C),” the article talks about plans for the future and the study that will be necessary. The essay suggests a few actions to respond to urban trends, make the environment safer, and get ready for more urbanization in the future.
The actions include: increasing the number of C&C publications published; conducting research on segregation in urban areas; concentrating on trends and patterns in poverty and segregation; reducing segregation at the micro level; and conducting study on changes in urbanization across international borders.19]
But Mike Owen Benediktsson contends in a June 2018 edition of C&C that spatial inequality—the notion of a shortage of resources through a particular space—would be detrimental to urban sociology in the long run. Neighborhood problems are the result of political issues and forms.
Criticism
Numerous theories within the field of urban sociology have faced criticism, primarily aimed at the ethnocentric perspectives held by numerous pioneering theorists who laid the foundation for urban studies during the twentieth century.
Early ideas that aimed to portray cities as flexible “superorganisms” frequently overlooked the complex roles played by social ties within local communities, implying that the urban environment itself, rather than the people who live there, governed the growth and form of cities.
Highway planning regulations and other government-spurred programs, such as those implemented by planner Robert Moses and others, have been attacked by underprivileged inner-city residents as being ugly and insensitive to their needs. The sluggish progress of empirically grounded urban research is indicative of local urban administrations’ inability to adjust.
A few contemporary social theorists have also criticized urban sociologists for what appears to be a lack of vision regarding the importance of culture in inner cities. William Julius Wilson has attacked theory that emerged in the middle of the 20th century, arguing that it mostly focused on the structural functions of institutions rather than how culture itself influences everyday experiences in inner cities, including poverty.
He contends that the disinterest in this subject paints an imperfect picture of life in inner cities. One significant area of sociology is thought to be the urban sociological theory.
Throughout history, sociologists have frequently questioned and critiqued the idea of urban sociology as a whole. A variety of factors, including resources, geography, and race, have expanded the concept.
.. Given that most Americans live in suburbs and that the population is expanding, Castells thinks that most urban sociologists concentrate their studies on cities and ignore the other significant groups that are found in towns, rural areas, and suburbs.
Additionally, he contends that a “Sociology of Settlements,” which would address the majority of the concerns surrounding the term, would provide a more concise and orderly explanation for the research conducted by urban sociologists and that they have overcomplicated the term.21]
Urban sociologists study a variety of topics, including human overpopulation, peri-urban settlements, and fieldwork on social interaction in metropolitan areas.
Perry Burnett conducted study on urban sprawl and city optimization for human population while attending the University of Southern Indiana. Certain sociologists research the connections between urban patterns and policies.