The urban sociology is a branch of the Sociologie which tends to include/understand the reports/ratios of interaction and of transformation which exist between the shapes of organization of the company and the shapes of town-planning. The first of these study, that of the forms which a company takes in space, was called social morphology by Marcel Mauss, Maurice Halbwachs or Jean Brunhes; The second, that of the shapes of the city with its habitat, its monuments, its decorations, and in general all its installations, urban morphology is called .

Knowledge, by urban sociology, of the reports/ratios of interactions between social morphology and urban morphology, makes it possible on the one hand to support the social life in the existantantes cities, on the other hand to better conceive the new urban or architectural units (programming). It is often called urban Anthropologie.

One calls also urban sociology the empirical social investigations which relate to the populations established on urbanized territories and which approach them by the problems which pose for the administrations.

The difference between these two kinds in studies is not a question of method: both proceed by comparisons starting from Statistique S or of Monographie S, but a question of difference in aiming practical their recipients: one makes it possible to intervene by architectural and urban installation on all the scales (restoration, transformations, construction, decoration, animation), the other by individual administrative measures (subsidies, assistance, information, repression, education, ousting) or collective (laws, payments).

Introduction: What is what urbanization?

The urbanization is a historical movement of transformation of the shapes of the company which one can define as the increase in those which live in Ville compared to the whole of the population. The urbanization declined between the IV and X century, it is only after it took again its growth with the movement of the Sauveté S and the country house S.

The striking fact of the modern time is the clear acceleration of the migrations, since first half of XIXe, in bond with the suppression of the local communities of inhabitants and industrialization. The surplus of the campaigns flows in the cities; one will speak as of the end about the 19th century about rural migration. One attends the passage of a rural traditional company at an urban company.

The striking fact of the contemporary time is since 1918, then 1945 the concentration of the populations in the periphery of the cities called Banlieue S. the form of establishment is not strictly speaking any more that of a city with Maison S and public buildings aligned to form street S and place S, but an intermediate form between the rural and urban territory that certain authors call " rurbanisme"

Social morphologies

The urban studies ( Urban Studies in English) concentrate their analyzes mainly on the distribution of the social classes, groups social and of the Ethnie S within urban spaces. It is for example the case of Robert E. Park, of the sociological school of Chicago and Richard Sennett. For the school of Chicago, the city is considered like an organization and the social organization is seen like an ecology. The city is thus a social laboratory.

Contemporary sociologies

But several contemporary authors in urban sociology currently work on the relationship between city, culture and economy. Certain researchers show how the urbanity (organisational specificities) of the city affects the operation of the economy and the job market as well as the culture and artistic creation. Saskia Sassen carries out its research on the bond between Mondialisation and cities.

With regard to the Sociology of the popular quarters, one can in particular quote two authors per order of appearance: William Foote Whyte and Laurent Mucchielli.

Concepts & problems

Several concepts and problems interest the sociologists of the urban one.

One can summarize of it the general framework with two principles stated by Henri Lefebvre:

• the city is a projection on the ground of the social reports/ratios;
• There exist two categories of reports/ratios to space, the reports/ratios of appropriation (all that people make to express their more or less exclusive possession of a territory: real construction, decoration, occupation, cleanliness, barriers or symbolic systems, etc.) and reports/ratios of domination (all collective devices of installation: payments of town planning, hygiene, of safety, projects of installation, standards of administration, management, of property development, organizes, etc.). The shapes of the city is a permanent compromise between the multitude of the appropriations and the permanence of the political power.

Commes problems, one can quote the residential territorialities, sociabilities, trajectories, the dynamic ones of Intégration or socio-space segregation (phenomena of Ghetto isation), of Gentrification,) the Urban violences, the practices of mobility, the representations social of the Ville, the town authorities of Socialisation, the Social control on the Public space, the pricing of the rates of the Immobilier, the Monumentalité S, the Mégapole S, etc

Notes and ré fé rences

Sources

Elements of bibliography

• social Morphology , Maurice Halbwachs, 1938, Armand Colin.

• Production of space , Henri Lefebvre, 1974, Anthropos.
• the medieval City. Social system, urban system , Yves Barel, 1977, Grenoble, PUG.
• urban Sociology , Yves Grafmeyer, 1994,128 p.
• Cities good to live, cities invivabes , in Re-examined MAUSS, with Jacques Dewitte, Jean-Claude Michéa, Marc Wiel, Karl Gruber, Leon Krier, Louis Maitrier, Christian Norberg-Schulz, Ernst Kallai, Anne-Marie Fixot, Nicolas Shoe, 1999, Paris, the Discovery.
• Production of beautiful. three studies of sociology on the popular dwelling , Louis Maitrier, 2001, in Re-examined MAUSS, n°18, Paris, the Discovery.
• Flesh and Pierre: the body and the city in Western civilization , Richard Sennett, Verdier, 2002
• Let us like the city, in theoretical Cahiers for the ecology policy, n°7, with Nathalie Blanc, Jacques Lolive, Dominique Chouquer, Dominique Boullier, 2004, the Tower the Acute ones, Éditions of the Paddle.
• When the city is demolished. Which policy vis-a-vis the crisis of the suburbs? , Jacques Donzelot, 2006, Paris, Threshold
• New State Spaces. Urban governance and the rescaling off statehood , Neil Brenner, Oxford, Oxford University Near, 2004
• City and Campagne. End of a dualism , Alain Berger and J.Rouzier, Economica, 1977
• Bibliography in urban sociology

Related articles

• Town planning, Architecture

• City, Mégapole
• Urbanization
• School of Chicago, human Ecology
• Publications on the topic of town planning and Bibliography in urban sociology
• “antithème”: rural Sociology

External bonds

• Metropolises, review of urban studies