Neighbourhoods could be described as gemeinschaft spaces within the city. The initial observations on the city underscored characteristics such as anonymity, blasé attitude and anomie. Taking their intellectual cue from Georg Simmel, the Ecological School had emphasized the disorganized and anomic nature of the city. Park had written, “It is probably the breaking down of local attachments and the weakening of the restraints and inhibitions of the primary group, under the influence of the urban environment which are largely responsible for the increase of vice and crime in great cities.”

Later it was found out that it is not so and that there is plenty of gemeinschaft relations in the city, that is, if we care to look for them. The Compositional School doing intensive fieldwork found evidences of primary relations in slums and ethnic villages.