Wirth was an important member of the Chicago School and he was inspired by Simmel. He wrote his doctoral work on the ghettos of Russian Jewish immigrants in Chicago. Wirth and his colleagues came to view the spatial patterns in the city as a result of powerful social factors such as competition and struggle for survival. They viewed urban space as a container, a built environment that enclosed action. Wirth’s work marks the culmination of what we have been referring to as the classical view of urban sociology.

Wirth studied the characteristic of the people in the city and how the life there might produce a distinct urban culture. Thus urbanism as a dependent variable became a thing to be explained. His theory of the city isolated several factors that were universal social characteristics of the city. He makes a case for contrasting between urban/industrial and folk/rural societies. He draws attention to the peculiar characteristics of the city as a particular form of human association.

The article that we will discuss here is considered to be one of the foundational statements of the Chicago school.