BSS Assignment

The role of sociology in urban and regional
planning
Sociology is an exciting and illuminating field of study that analyzes and

explains important matters in our personal lives, our communities, and
the world. Sociology is the study of human social relationships and
institutions.
Urban and regional planning is a notion that encompasses the whole

set of social activities aimed at anticipating, representing and regulating
the development of an urban or a regional area. It thus articulates
intellectual activities of study and prospective, of social and economic
forecasting with more concrete activities such as infrastructure
programming, land reservation and land use regulation. Planning
operates at different scales: neighborhood, city or region. Urban
planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning,
or rural planning. An urban planner is a professional in charge of
planning and designing neighborhood’s, public areas, industrial areas,
parks, streets and other sections of towns and cities. In their work,
urban planners consider the needs of urban dwellers and determine
how to make efficient use of available land. By talking with residents
about their requirements and researching information, they decide how
to rebuild and improve existing neighborhoods to enhance daily
activities. They must also take into account the future urban
development that might be necessary for revitalising facilities and
accommodating a growing population.
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Sociology is the study of society, the formation of people into groups of
various types and sizes.
According to Haggerty (2000)- ‘Urban sociology studies human groups

in a territorial frame of reference….with an emphasis on the interplay
between social and spatial organization and the ways in which changes
in spatial organization affect social and psychological well-being and are
tied together by a common curiosity about the changing dynamics,
determinants, and consequences of urban society’s most characteristic
form of settlement, the city’. It concerns the dynamism of society
stimulated by urbanization. It tends to identify the urban problems and
implement possible remedies to solve them. It is a factual study of
urban social living. Urban sociology is the sociological analysis of city
and its life style. It also deals with the historic forces, which have
produced the industrial and corporate cities of the present era; the
location of industrial and commercial areas within the contemporary
city; the lifestyles of racial and ethnic groups within urban
neighborhoods; and the effect of social, economic, and political forces
on patterns of everyday life in cities of suburbs. Urban sociology
examines social structures and processes of modern urban ways of life
and its implications for city dwellers with the socio –cultural milieu.
sociology assists planners in making their rural/urban plans for the

future. Communities are akin to being interdependent societies on a
smaller scale than an entire nation-state. Knowing how society works is
an important part of developing an urban plan. Understanding the
needs of a local community is also an important of planning.
2
As such, planning is a form of social action, different from sociology,
which analyses the behavior and society. An urban sociologist can
provide all the necessary knowledge in the process of urban planning.
Socioeconomic factors shape the morphological pattern of the city
especially the urban areas of the developing countries like India. Urban
areas in reality are socio-cultural units strongly influenced by ethnic,
religious, linguistic and politico-historical factors.
Urban planning consists of two components such as physical planning

and socioeconomic planning. Physical planning involves morphological
aspects like land use, architecture, transportation and energy, whereas
socioeconomic component involves social or human ecological
processes, which have to be taken into consideration during urban
planning. A sociologist is a better-equipped person in understanding the
human ecological processes like segregation, culture and social order.
Hence, social values, traditions and beliefs play an important role in
exerting the influence on land use, especially the housing pattern. The
urban areas are not only the artifacts of buildings or structures but also
are the agglomeration of human beings. In other words, social and
cultural processes are central to locational processes, that is, is shifting
and sorting of people leaves a deep impact on the morphology or
internal structure of the city.
The value of planning to the society can be understood by the way it is

called upon in modern times because complex urban area problems
(involving crime, housing, taxes, transportation, health, utilities and
welfare) cannot be adequately dealt with alone by either market
mechanisms or the functional self-interest of party politics.
3
A sociologist, therefore, plays two major roles in urban planning—first
he helps in analyzing and explaining the social reality dispassionately,
objectively and truthfully. This is because they possess the technical
know-how and methodological equipment to understand such a task.
They are also capable of understanding and establishing in

unmistakable terms the processes and mechanisms of the social reality
of the urban Centre. Secondly, they coordinate with the urban planner
and administrator with logically sound and meaningful alternatives
(ideas) for urban development. Thus, to make the city really beautiful
and also dynamic, the physical and social factors have to be integrated.
A sociologist is a right person to integrate these two aspects.
The sociologist, as member of the urban planning team, can be of

significant value regarding ecological studies. There are several
undesirable urban growth forms, such as unlimited sprawl, which the
planner can hardly understand or explain without the knowledge and
research methods of the sociologist. Neighborhood development and
urban renewal are also branches of urban planning where the
sociologist's vision is imperative. In the U.S.A., where the “bull-dozer”-
approach was characteristic of the implementation of renewal
proposals, Fried, Glcucher. Seelv and Gans. inter alia. did valuable work
to emphasize the need for a sociological approach to the problem.
The sociologists studied the communities that would migrate to the

new towns, as well as how the community structures and demographics
would interact with the new towns. The Urban Planners used the input
4
of the sociologists to design the new towns. Whether they got it right
has been the matter of much debate.
So, we can say that sociology play an important role in urban and
regional panning.

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The role of sociology in urban and regional

Sociology is an exciting and illuminating field of study that analyzes and

Urban and regional planning is a notion that encompasses the whole

According to Haggerty (2000)- ‘Urban sociology studies human groups

sociology assists planners in making their rural/urban plans for the

Urban planning consists of two components such as physical planning

The value of planning to the society can be understood by the way it is

They are also capable of understanding and establishing in

The sociologist, as member of the urban planning team, can be of

The sociologists studied the communities that would migrate to the

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