Urban Society: Urbanism and Urbanization, Cities and Mega-Cities, Slums, the Middle Class and Urban Movements
2. Towns, cities and mega-cities; industry, service and business
The Census of India counts two kinds of urban places. Statutory towns have a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee. Census towns are places without such a body that meet three criteria: a population of at least 5,000, a density of at least 400 persons per square kilometre, and at least 75 per cent of the male main workforce in non-agricultural work. Census classes run from Class I cities (100,000 and above) downwards; places of a million and more are million-plus cities, and agglomerations of ten million and more are commonly called mega-cities. India's urbanization has been slow by world standards and top-heavy, concentrated in the largest cities, while much recent urban growth has been in census towns — places that have become urban in function without being governed as towns.
The economic base of Indian cities has shifted. Colonial port and administrative cities gave way to planned industrial towns after independence (steel towns such as Bhilai and Rourkela), and since liberalisation to service-led growth — information technology, finance and business services in cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Gurugram. Unlike the Western path, where industrialisation drove urbanization, Indian cities absorbed rural migrants largely into an informal sector of petty trade, construction and domestic work. Saskia Sassen's global cities (The Global City, 1991) — New York, London, Tokyo as command centres of the world economy — offers a frame for Mumbai and Bengaluru's integration into global business, with sharp polarisation between high-end professionals and low-wage service workers.
3. Neighbourhood, slums and ethnic enclaves; middle class and gated communities
- Neighbourhood: the Chicago school's natural areas and Wirth's thesis of declining community were challenged by studies showing urban villages and strong local ties — Herbert Gans's The Urban Villagers (1962) found close-knit Italian-American community life in a Boston district officially labelled a slum.
- Slums: Oscar Lewis's 'culture of poverty' (from his studies of Mexican and Puerto Rican families, 1959 and 1966) claimed that the poor develop fatalism and present-orientation that pass across generations; critics argued this blames the poor for structural exclusion. Mike Davis's Planet of Slums (2006) linked slum growth to structural adjustment and informal work. In India, slums such as Dharavi combine dense housing with thriving informal industry, and 'notified' versus 'non-notified' status decides access to services.
- Ethnic enclaves: residential clustering by religion, caste, language or region, partly by choice and partly by discrimination in housing — Muslim ghettoisation in several Indian cities after riots is a studied case of segregation hardening through violence.
- Middle class and gated communities: the post-liberalisation middle class has been studied as a consumerist stratum defining itself through lifestyle (Leela Fernandes). Gated communities, analysed in the United States by Blakely and Snyder (Fortress America, 1997), have spread in Indian cities — privately governed enclaves with walls, guards and services that secede from shared civic infrastructure. Gentrification, a term coined by Ruth Glass (1964), describes the displacement of poorer residents as middle-class households move into and upgrade an area.
4. Urban movements and violence
Castells's The City and the Grassroots (1983) defined urban social movements as collective action around collective consumption, cultural identity and local self-management. In Indian cities such movements include struggles of slum dwellers and pavement dwellers against eviction, hawkers' and waste-pickers' organisations, residents' welfare associations (often middle-class and seeking order and cleanliness), and campaigns over water, transport and housing. Partha Chatterjee's idea of political society — the poor negotiating with the state through collective claims and electoral leverage rather than through the rights-based civil society of the middle class — was developed largely from such urban settlements.
Cities are also the main sites of communal violence. Ashutosh Varshney (Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life, 2002), comparing riot-prone and peaceful city pairs, found that inter-communal civic networks — especially associational forms such as business associations, trade unions and political parties with Hindu and Muslim members — restrained violence far more than everyday engagement alone. Paul Brass described an 'institutionalised riot system' in which specialists in communal mobilisation convert local incidents into riots for political advantage. Both challenge the idea that riots are spontaneous eruptions of ancient hatreds.
Key takeaways
- Urbanization is demographic, urbanism a way of life, urbanity a sensibility; Simmel's blasé attitude and Wirth's size-density-heterogeneity define classical urbanism.
- Burgess's concentric zones, Hoyt's sectors and Harris-Ullman's multiple nuclei model urban land use; Castells, Harvey and Lefebvre replaced Chicago ecology with political economy.
- A census town has at least 5,000 people, a density of 400 per square kilometre and 75 per cent of male main workers outside agriculture; Indian urbanization is top-heavy, service-led and absorbed into the informal sector.
- Lewis's culture of poverty, Gans's urban villagers, ethnic enclaves, gated communities and gentrification describe the social geography of the city.
- Castells defined urban social movements; Chatterjee's political society describes how the urban poor bargain with the state; Varshney's associational civic ties and Brass's riot systems explain urban communal violence.
Practice questions (10)
Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.
Louis Wirth derived the urban way of life from which three characteristics of the city?
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Answer: D — Size, density and heterogeneity
In 'Urbanism as a Way of Life' (1938) Wirth defined the city by size, density and heterogeneity and derived impersonal, segmental relations from them. Invasion and succession are Chicago-school ecological processes.The 'blasé attitude' of the metropolitan individual was described by:
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Answer: D — Georg Simmel
Simmel's 'The Metropolis and Mental Life' (1903) argued that the overstimulation of city life and the money economy blunt the capacity to react, producing the blasé attitude and reserve.Which of the following are criteria for a census town in India? Select all that apply.
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Answer: A — A density of at least 400 persons per square kilometre; B — A minimum population of 5,000; D — At least 75 per cent of the male main workforce in non-agricultural work
Census towns meet all three demographic criteria but have no urban local body; a place with a municipality or corporation is a statutory town, which is the other category.Castells, in The Urban Question, defined the urban as the spatial unit of:
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Answer: D — Collective consumption
For Castells the city is where labour power is reproduced through collectively provided goods — housing, transport, health, education — so urban politics centres on the state's provision of collective consumption.Assertion (A): Varshney found that some Indian cities with Hindu-Muslim populations remained peaceful while others were riot-prone. Reason (R): Associational forms of inter-communal civic engagement act as a check on the escalation of communal tension into violence. Choose the correct option.
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Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
Varshney's paired comparison (such as Aligarh and Calicut) found the variation in A and explained it by the presence or absence of inter-communal associational networks, which is R.The concept of the 'culture of poverty' was proposed by:
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Answer: D — Oscar Lewis
Lewis developed the idea from ethnographies of Mexican and Puerto Rican families. Gans studied 'urban villagers', Davis the 'planet of slums', and Glass coined 'gentrification'.Which model of urban land use sees the city as growing in wedge-shaped zones along transport routes?
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Answer: A — Hoyt's sector model
Homer Hoyt (1939) argued that residential areas of similar rent extend outward in sectors along transport axes, modifying Burgess's concentric rings.Which term, coined by Ruth Glass in 1964, describes the displacement of poorer residents when middle-class households move into and upgrade a neighbourhood?
Numerical answer — type the value.
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Answer: gentrification
Glass observed middle-class 'gentry' buying up working-class houses in London until the original residents were displaced; the term now covers redevelopment-led displacement in cities worldwide.Partha Chatterjee's concept of 'political society' refers to:
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Answer: D — The domain where marginal groups negotiate with the state through collective claims rather than formal rights
In The Politics of the Governed (2004) Chatterjee contrasted the rights-bearing civil society of the middle class with political society, where squatters and the poor, often in technical illegality, win concessions through mobilisation and electoral leverage.Which pairing of author and book is NOT correct?
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Answer: D — Louis Wirth — The Preindustrial City
The Preindustrial City (1960) is Gideon Sjoberg's; Wirth's classic is the essay 'Urbanism as a Way of Life' (1938).