Z historii socjologii miasta i procesów urbanizacji : ekologia klasyczna i konwencjonalne teorie urbanizacji

Abstract

The author discusses two theoretical-methodological trends being a frame of reference to the contemporary studies on the urban phenomena. The first one, called classical ecology,'has been initiated In the 1920s by the well-known investigations carried out by R. E. Park, E. Burgess, and R. D. McKenzie of the Chicago University. A town was conceived by them as a configuration of three elements: a natural area, an economic order, and a cultural order. A natural area determines, in their opinion, a biotic society which is denoted as an arrangement of unconscious interpersonal relations observed at a particular territory (a natural area). The second trend was called by the author the conventional theories ol' the urbanization. According to these theories te subject of an analysis are the processes of towns development and their transformations. This development is unilinear in accordance with the following evolutional continuum: preindustrial city industrializing city (semi-modernized city), -» industrial city. The forerunner of this theoretical orientation was, among other, L. Wirth, the disciple of R. E. Park. His person is a kind of a link combining both theories under discussion.