ABSTRACT
The metropolitan society is heterogeneous, its patterns transitory. Any effort to discover the basis of order must, then, account for change—and change must be explained in terms of basic structural conditions. The trends in the larger society may, then, make possible a reasonable explanation of the changes in given metropolitan areas. The chapter provides a brief description of the city as a social structure and a discussion of the dynamics of increase in scale. It looks at the societal changes in the geographical division of labor and in the processes of integration. At the societal level, looking from the center of the organizational network, the extension of the control systems has three aspects of major importance: the widening of the radii of interdependence, the increasing range of the communications flow, and the widening span of control and compliance. As the social process continues, the society moves toward cultural homogeneity and conformity to the larger order: "urbanism" eventually accompanies compliance.
