ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses how urban society affects urban culture and how culture affects the daily lives and the life prospects of city dwellers. In studying the people of the city, the key discipline is sociology. Urban forms and designs describe the physical appearance and infrastructural layout of cities, and efficiently planned city often evolves in response to the needs of citadel and market forces. But it is the people of the city in their communities, their individual aspirations and collective struggles, their day-to-day lives and their moments of heightened awareness, that constitute the core subject of urban studies and the final purpose of city planning. Today, the field includes social interactions between individuals and groups, patterns of social stratification, social deviance, and issues of race, ethnicity, and gender. As socio-economic classes, or racial, ethnic, or immigrant groups, compete for benefits and status within the urban order, short-term confrontations and long-term accommodations tend to take place as urban society slowly evolves.
