The Relation between the Theory of Urbanism and Sociological Research

 On the basis of the three variables: number, density of settlement, and degree of heterogeneity, urbanism can be approached from three interrelated perspectives:

• As a physical structure
  
  
• As a system of social organization
  
  
• from the point view of human personalities

Physical  structure: comprising a population base, technology and an ecological order. This perspective looks at the demographic factors—such as the city has more people in their youth than children and old people. The city cannot reproduce itself because the birthrates are lower and sometimes the death rates are higher than in the countryside.

Competition for space is great so that each area generally tends to be put to the use which yields the greatest economic return. Place of work become dissociated from place of residence. The pattern of land use, the land values, rentals, and ownership, the nature and functioning of the physical structures, of housing, of transportation and communication facilities, of public utilities—these and many other phases of the physical mechanism of the city are not isolated phenomena unrelated to the city as a social entity, but are affected by and in turn affect the urban mode of life.