Concepts in Urban Sociology

Concepts in Urban Sociology

Urban area

Urban area refers geographical place characterized by demographic factors like size and density of population; industrial economy; developed infrastructure, transport and communication. Urban area is demarcated and determined on the basis of fixed criteria by administration machinery, which varies from country to country. The functional requirements of a particular place make it urban. The urban area emerges due to the functional requisites such as industrial activity, trade and commerce, political activism, tourism and attraction because of monument and religious institutions etc. for fulfilling the overall need of the whole nation or country. Urban areas are categorized on the basis of functions they performs such as industrial town or city, marketing center, center of trade and business, political capital, administrative headquarter, center of higher educational and research institutions, place of religious pilgrimage, place of tourism etc. In fact, one city or town may have multiple functions.

Urban Society

It is an abstract concept for understanding the relationship between people and urban environment on the one hand and nature of action and interaction among people living in urban areas on the other. Urban society refers social structure underlies in urban areas and distinct social system tends to manifest complex social relationship between individuals and urban social institutions. Urban society has to be understood on the basis of some characteristics such as size of population and its diversified compositions, heterogeneity and density of population. So the concept of urban society can be understood with the help of urbanism or urban mode of life.

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Author of this essay is M Hasan Laskar, Assistant Prof. Dept. of Sociology, University of Science and Technology, Meghalaya