Essay on the Scope of Urban Sociology – The scope of urban sociology is really vast. In addition to the study of the general principles of urban sociology, it deals with the development of towns, social disorganisation, problems of urban life and town planning.
It studies the interaction between the urban environment and the development of human personality. It studies the structure and functions of urban family, its role and changing patterns.
It deals with the institution of marriage in urban context, and the recent trends in it. It studies the class structure and class struggle in urban societies. It concentrates on such features of social disorganisation, such as-crimes, juvenile delinquency, prostitution, beggary, unemployment, diseases, environment pollution, slums, gambling, alcoholism and night life. It analyses the factors and causes of social and personal disorganisation.
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It undertakes an investigation of industries and industrial relations, the causes of disharmony between the labour and the management and the ways and means of bringing about harmony between the two.
Urban sociology makes its study with its basic assumption that the city is ‘not a static phenomenon, but a series of dynamic inter-relationships’. “In the ever-changing modern city institutions are altered; old problems change or disappear and new ones arise.
Likewise, hew methods for solving these problems are constantly being tried in urban sociology. It gives suggestions for urban planning and control. Hence, it not only studies the facts of urban life but also evaluates the facts in order to understand their causes and means of improvement.
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Though the immediate task of urban sociology is to make an analytical study of the structure and functioning of the urban community, in doing so, it gives suggestions to overcome the problems of city life, which are of great practical importance.
The value of urban sociology is widely recognised today. The process of urbanisation has been greatly hastened in advanced countries due to industrialisation and technological changes. The cities today ’embrace in one way or another nearly everything in life’.
The studies on urban society and urban life have also been diverse and many. They may deal with “urban traffic or urban housing, with municipal government or finance, with fire protection or park maintenance, with juvenile delinquency or commercialised vice.” Urban sociology seeks to find ways of solving some of the difficulties, nuisances, dangers and derelictions of city life.
As a result of urbanisation there is a change in personal tendencies and trends. The norms and standards of marriage and family have undergone considerable changes. It has given rise to various social, economic and sanitary problems. It is in this context that the need of urban sociology is strongly felt.
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An urban sociologist is a social doctor who is busily engaged in diagnosing the social diseases. “The emphasis on problems is natural and necessary because the close-packing of thousands and millions of people in small space inevitably creates conditions universally regarded as unfortunate.” Some of these conditions are so new that there are no traditional modes of handling them.
They can be dealt with only by investigating, by inventing new institutional arrangements. The value of urban sociology under these conditions can hardly be exaggerated.