The course revolves around the theme of the city as seen through the lens of sociology. It captures how the concept of urban is intertwined with what we understand by modernization and development. The concept of urban is not only about rural areas changing in size and density but also about changes in way of life. We agree that there is something distinctive about the city. But sociologists have debated about the nature of its distinctiveness. Social thinkers studying the city in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had proposed their own observations and predictions. Did the built environment of the industrial city reflect the ‘hypocrisy’ of the capitalist system or was it a novel social formation that congealed rationality in the artifacts of money and watch? As Simmel had pointed out in his celebrated essay, our task is not to condone or condemn but to understand.