ABSTRACT
In considering problems of urbanization in Central Africa, social scientists have identified various emerging patterns of social relationships and urban personality. The analysis is less concerned with the process by which rural emigrants become urbanized but more with the consequences of this process: it looks synchronically at the inter-relations of components of the contemporary social structure of Blantyre. Though the level of urbanization is still low by world standards, coupled with the rate, it is already causing serious social strain especially in housing, employment, the provision of social services and other facilities. Blantyre City has well defined social areas or ecological zones, which can be classified into four groups. The four ecological types adequately depict the existing residential pattern, which is important for analysing the emerging pattern of new social relations, urban-rural links, life styles, life chances, cultural patterns, occupational groups, tribal orientations, types of emerging personality and urban-rural modes of communication.
