Running Head: SOCIAL ORGANIZATION IN THE CITIES

Problems Affecting Social Organization in Cities

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION IN THE CITIES

Problems Affecting Social Organization in Cities

In numerous nations, the discussion on the novel form of urban that people live in today
began in the early 80s from the deurbanization concept, with anecdotes regarding the death of
cities, as well as on what has been termed as neo-ruralization. Thus, the notion about the death
of the city is not news and it has emerged occasionally ever since the appearance of the urban
form. Nonetheless, the 80s census returns, in addition to speculation on the social implications
of the explosive information technology diffusion, accorded empirical data to the most current
account of this recurrent notion. In effect, the city and large metropolitans are anything but
disappearing. Research indicate that urban systems within majority of advanced economies are
not waning, but are experiencing an ardent transformation. Thus, this paper aims to look into the
problems affecting social organization in cities.
Social ecology is a distinct integrant in social organization. Thus, social ecology, both in
contemporary and classical versions, is grounded on the assessment of competition amid factions
of humans for living space. In particular, the residential analysis is the most crucial factor in
social ecology assessment because most statistics on cities are grounded on residential patterns,
as well as residential observation units. The new urban morphology form is the outcome of the
broad-minded variation of diverse populations drifting around cities. Therefore, with increased
population mobility in direction, numbers, frequency, and span, the relationship between territory
and population becomes greatly dynamic (Thomlinson, 1969).
One key issue confronting todays society is the profound reformation of the established
equilibrium between territory and populations. For example, at the highest level, there is the
large geopolitical units disappearance, for instance, the USSR, and their replacement by novel
and often undefined units of politics (Savage, Warde &Ward, 2003). At the lower level, there is

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION IN THE CITIES

the development and rivalry of enormous urban entities contending with one another across
national frontiers, and progressively playing independent functions in the processes of
globalization. Lastly, at the level of microsociology, there is the interplay of class, age, and
ethnic traits that define the cities social ecology. In particular, it is hard when administrative
areas within cities interact with ethnically sensitive populacesidentifying morphologies, as well
as social actors strive to strategically position themselves with regard to invisible administrative
cages network (Thomlinson, 1969).
The relationship between land and population has never been completely stable, as seen
in such far-reaching movements as the change of the agrarian frontier, historical migration
waves, and current urbanization dynamics, which have generated todays world. Today, a novel
dramatic element has been added to this relationship via the speed wherein, experientially or
physically, diverse points in the environment of places can be linked to diverse points of
environments of social units, events, and people. Thus, this novel dimension has large scale
social consequences that are yet to be explored (Thomlinson, 1969).
Analysis that are classbased can be hard, especially in a time where social movements
have become more and more visible in the urban cities and changes in economys structure
deeply affect defined patterns of class in both advanced and developing countries (Thrift &
Amin, 2002; Taylor, 1995). Thus, there is need for reconceptualization as majority of the
recognized intellectual tools utilized to portray the phenomenon of urban cities were based on the
radically diverse urban morphology, as well as are strained by novel social relation patterns
emerging in space and time. Ultimately, profound changes in the organization of modern cities
generate the problem of economic, political, and social governance of emerging enormous
metropolitan complexes (Thomlinson, 1969).

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION IN THE CITIES

Conclusively, the traditional municipal institutions and policies seem insufficient to attain
the objective of governing these novel entities. Particularly, in large global regions, even national
governments do not seem capable in governing systems increasingly reliant on a world economy
that is highly integrated, and have the capacity to move independently on transnational
marketplaces. Thus, the waning of traditional social arrangements, for example, class -based
units of ecology, affects the long established local government practices. At the same time,
social and economic actors comprising localities are becoming outward looking, and the pursuit
for social identity is translating itself into distrustful localistic statements.

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References

Thomlinson, R. (1969). Urban structure: The social and spatial character of cities. New York:
Random House.
Savage, M., Warde, A. &Ward, K. (2003). Urban Sociology, capitalism and
modernity, 2nd edn. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Taylor, P.J. (1995).World Cities and Territorial States: The Rise and Fall of their
Mutuality, in P.L. Knox and P.J. Taylor (eds) World Cities in a WorldSystem, pp. 4862. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thrift, N. & Amin, A. (2002). Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Cambridge: Polity
Press.