Module 3: Theories of Urban Sociology
  Lecture 14: The Chicago School or the Ecological Theory of the City
 
  • Park took the position that the city has ‘natural habitats’ and that it obeyed laws of its own and there is a limit to the arbitrary modifications which it is possible to make. In other words, the community tends to conform to some pattern. ‘Human ecology’ therefore, refers to the study of the process of human group’s adjustment to the environment as well as interrelations of groups. Park saw that human beings find themselves living in territorially organized communities. The process whereby ‘birds of the same feather flock together’ is neither rational nor conscious but happens to people and their activities just as it happens to plants. Homogeneous social organizations will be found within an area. The difference being that man copes with environment through technological device.