The ecological perspective in urban sociology that developed in Chicago University considered the physical and demographic factors to have predictable effects on the quality of social life and human behaviour. In the next five lectures we will be looking at how the ecological theorists interpreted the city as a spatial pattern and a moral order. We will be looking at the following works:

• "Human Ecology”—Robert Park (1936)
  
  
• "Urbanism as a way of life”— Louis Wirth (1938)
  
  
• "The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project”—Ernest W. Burgess (1925)