The Theory of Modern Urban Structure

Abstract

The Most remarkable feature of modern urban society is said to be the daily movement of population from the urban fringe to the center of a city. This daily movement has divided the family life and the labor of urban people. The development of urban communication promotes this tendency and consequently the modern way of life in urban society divides itself into three parts. First, and of primary importance, is family life, secondly, occupational life, and finally recreational life.According to this functional differentiation of urban life the urban area also divides into three parts, the residential area, the business area, and the amusement zone. Professors Park and Burgess point out this phenomena in their well known theory of urban structure, the concentric or zonal theory ; However, they make only two distinctions, the primary or residential area and the secondary or professional area. They overlook the very important amusement area. The so called third area is described as mass-like society by Professor Svend Riemer in his book titled “Modern Cities”. This mass-like society characterizes not only the structure of the area but also the life of the people.His book criticizes first the common theory of urban area structure and then deals with the new theory of urban structure from the viewpoint of mass-like society.The characteristic of urban society is only depend upon this mass-like phenomena and it is absolutely necessarily to have the accurate idea about the situation of non-residential, anonymous, heterogeneous and non-organized structure of urban peoples in their mass-like tendency.