ABSTRACT
The early industrial cities and towns were but one step in England's evolution to a fully urbanized, metropolitan society. The rural-urban transition in the United States (US) has been associated with population movements that were much more extensive than those of England and Sweden. The twentieth-century metropolitan form of urban development, spread cities with weak centers and geared to advanced technology, has flourished more in the US than in any other nation, especially in the American West and the new South. At the central point of maximum metropolitan accessibility is a business district, with the tallest urban structures typically being commercial office buildings, especially banks. A rival to economic determinism as a factor in metropolitan communities is the process of social differentiation, the division and specialization of social life. In metropolitan areas, the household is a strongly differentiated locale consisting of the nuclear family, or even just one or two unrelated individuals, clearly separated and apart from the surrounding environment.
