Urban sociology
[1] Like most areas of sociology, urban sociologists use statistical analysis, observation, archival research, census data, social theory, interviews, and other methods to study a 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.
[2] The philosophical foundations of modern urban sociology originate from the work of sociologists such as Karl Marx, Ferdinand Tönnies, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber and Georg Simmel who studied and theorized the economic, social and cultural processes of urbanization and its effects on social alienation, class formation, and the production or destruction of collective and individual identities.
[6] Scholars of the Chicago School originally sought to answer a single question: how did an increase in urbanism during the time of the Industrial Revolution contribute to the magnification of contemporary social problems?
Along with this expansion came many of the era's emerging social problems – ranging from issues with concentrated homelessness and harsh living conditions to the low wages and long hours that characterized the work of the many newly arrived European immigrants.
Furthermore, unlike many other metropolitan areas, Chicago did not expand outward at the edges as predicted by early expansionist theorists, but instead 'reformatted' the space available in a concentric ring pattern.
Park, Burgess and McKenzie, professors at the University of Chicago and three of the earliest proponents of urban sociology, developed the Subculture Theories, which helped to explain the often-positive role of local institutions on the formation of community acceptance and social ties.
However, the concentrated number of environments present in the city for interaction increases the likelihood of individuals developing secondary ties, even if they simultaneously maintain distance from tightly knit communities.
[11] However, as the theory surrounding social networks has developed, sociologists such as Alejandro Portes and the Wisconsin model of sociological research began placing increased leverage on the importance of these weak ties.
As theorist Eric Oliver notes, neighbourhoods with vast social networks are also those that most commonly rely on heterogeneous support in problem-solving, and are also the most politically active.
In their research, impoverished neighbourhoods, which often rely on tightly knit local ties for economic and social support, were found to be targeted by developers for gentrification which displaced residents living within these communities.
Yet research covering the social impact of forced movement among these residents has noted the difficulties individuals often have with maintaining a level of economic comfort, which is spurred by rising land values and inter-urban competition between cities as a means to attract capital investment.
[19] However, in a June 2018 issue of C&C, Mike Owen Benediktsson argues that spatial inequality, the idea of a lack of resources through a specific space, would be problematic for the future of urban sociology.
For impoverished inner-city residents, the role of highway planning policies and other government-spurred initiatives instituted by the planner Robert Moses and others have been criticized as unsightly and unresponsive to residential needs.
William Julius Wilson has criticized theory developed throughout the middle of the twentieth century as relying primarily on the structural roles of institutions, and not how culture itself affects common aspects of inner-city life such as poverty.
Perry Burnett, who studied at the University of Southern Indiana, researched the idea of Urban sprawl and city optimization for the human population.
