ABSTRACT
The urbanization of the U.S. population is a fundamental datum of social science. In 1790, some 95 per cent of the nearly four million inhabitants of the new nation were "rural" in residence and 85 per cent were occupied in "agriculture." Today, scarcely 5 per cent of the population of some two hundred million remain on farms and three out of four persons live in cities or suburbs. This urban transformation is held accountable by many social scientists for much that is novel and distinctive about present day life and livelihood in the United States; for virtually the entire social fabric has changed in the course of passage from farm to city.
