ABSTRACT
Migrating from Europe, Mexico, and Africa to the United States, and within the United States from the countryside to the small town, from small town to city, each decade has witnessed a progressive concentration of population in the urban areas. The chapter discusses social differentiation as an attribute of a total society, defined as the variation in normative structure among subgroups. This may be translated into individuation or the probability that any two individuals will differ from each other in their controlling culture. Such differences in social geography are frequently implied in references to the suburban turn American society has taken—and the suburbs are used as prototypes to summarize the various trends of change. The "ideal type" approach to central city-suburban differences is less than adequate. It represents a dichotomy supported only at the level of local government. The two halves of the metropolis represent different configurations of the same attributes, different "mixes" of the same population types.
