ABSTRACT
For a number of years after the Second World War, urban sociology in Britain appeared to be declining gently into its dotage. Useful empirical work was still being produced, not least the various studies during the 1950s of working class community life, but urban social theory was stagnant and had failed in most cases to go beyond the parameters formulated in the 1920s by the Chicago school of human ecologists. In the last few years, however, the discipline has been experiencing something of a revival due first to the increased emphasis on political factors in the work of Rex, Pahl and others in the 1960s, and more recently to the infusion of Continental Marxist urban theories which have raised fundamental questions about the relationship between the city and capitalist political economy. Urban sociology today is thus witnessing a resurgence of intense and challenging theoretical debate, and at the centre of this are a number of crucial questions concerning urban politics.
