According to Gottdiener and Hutchison whose analysis has been followed above, this new urban sociology is better equipped in understanding the current trends in the changing urban skyline. Economic factors such as flow of real estate investment and the changing structure of manufacturing in a global system affect the socio-spatial features of daily life. The socio-spatial approach can be distinguished by the following characteristics:

First, it considers real estate development as the leading factor of changes in the metropolitan region.

Second, the socio-spatial approach considers government intervention and the interest of political will in growth as a principal factor in metropolitan change. Traditional urban ecology and other approaches ignore the role of government.

Third, the socio-spatial appraoch takes a global view of metropolitan development. Most local areas today are tied to the activities of multinational corporations and banks. Changes in the way they invest affect every resident. By emphasizing global economic changes, however, the socio-spatial appraoch also seeks to understand how local and national factors interrelate with international links. It also explains regional development better. The railroad tycoons competed with one another by building the infrastructure that opened up the great landmass of the USA to development but they also established towns and developed real estate as they went along. Finally, over the past several decades, we have seen that the shifts to suburbia and the Sunbelt were fueled in part by the phenomenal expansion of the single-family home industry and the development of lands outside the large central cities of the Northeast and Midwest.

City should be studied from a historical perspective, whereas the theories of urban sociology mainly look at the modern industrial city. It should also be comparative. Cities did and do exist at different times and in different places. The nature and characteristics of different cities need to be explained and the theories of urban sociology need to take care of these variations.