New Urban Sociology

The new urban sociology is a major paradigm developed in the 1970s and 1980s to challenge the fundamental assumptions and explanatory schemes of mainstream urban ecology and sociology. Although there are differences among the various theories that constitute new urban sociology, several major assumptions define the paradigm. First, it eschews strict demographic and variable-oriented analyses and focuses attention on the centrality of human agency and conflict in the determination of cities and urban life. The primary role of powerful economic actors, especially those in the real estate industry, in building and redeveloping cities is a predominant theme and topic among proponents. Another core assumption of the new urban sociology is that metropolitan development and patterns of spatial segregation are not inevitable but result from the conscious actions taken by individual decision makers in various class, race, gender, and community-based groups, acting under particular historical circumstances. In addition to the stress on human agency, the new urban sociology focuses on urban space as a constitutive dimension of social relations and a material product (e.g., the built environment) that can affect social relations. Moreover, the new urban sociology stresses the importance of symbols, meanings, and culture in shaping cities. This urban semiotic approach involves the exploration of sociomaterial objects and their constructed meanings as mediated through a constellation of signs and symbols they evoke and convey. Finally, the new urban sociology emphasizes the importance of global transformation as central to shaping life in all urban and metropolitan regions. This global approach is concerned with the influence of global political and economic forces as well as national and local patterns in shaping life in urban and metropolitan regions. The new urban sociology seeks to illuminate the web of complex relationships and interconnections that constitute the interplay of the local and global in the building of metropolitan space.