Working towards a serviceable definition of urbanism, Wirth locates the problem in the great variations between cities. Cities are different from one another—industrial cities from the commercial, mining, fishing, resort, university and the capital city. Therefore, a sociologically significant definition of the city seeks to select those elements of urbanism which mark it as a distinctive mode of human group life. For sociological purpose Wirth defines city as relatively large, dense and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals.

The Concept of Urbanism according to Wirth

Wirth proposes that the central problem for the sociologist of the city is to discover the forms of social action and organization that typically emerge in relatively permanent, compact settlements of large numbers of heterogeneous individuals.

City as upholding heterogeneity—the city has been the melting pot of races, peoples, and cultures, and a most favorable breeding-ground of new biological and cultural hybrids, it has not only tolerated but rewarded individual differences.

Size and density of the population aggregate—ever since Aristotle’s Politics it has been recognized that increasing the number of inhabitants in a settlement beyond a certain limit will affect the relationships between them and the character of the city.