Burgess was a member of the famed sociology department at the University of Chicago in
the 1920s and 1930s that set out to reinvent modern sociology by taking academic research
to the streets and by using the city of Chicago itself as a “living laboratory” for the study of
urban problems and social dynamics.
Burgess addressed a whole series of issues that connected the social dynamics of the city
with the lives of its citizens. He wrote extensively on issues related to marriage and the
family, the relation of personality to social groups, and, in the final decades of his life,
problems of the elderly.
Burgess focussed on patterns within a single city (the internal structure of the city), rather
than relationships among cities (systems of cities).
For all the problems and pathologies of urban life, Burgess saw cities as progressing.
He was convinced that there was an underlying logic to the social and economic structure of
cities that could be understood scientifically. He saw the city itself as the driving force behind
the region of which it was a part.
the 1920s and 1930s that set out to reinvent modern sociology by taking academic research
to the streets and by using the city of Chicago itself as a “living laboratory” for the study of
urban problems and social dynamics.
Burgess addressed a whole series of issues that connected the social dynamics of the city
with the lives of its citizens. He wrote extensively on issues related to marriage and the
family, the relation of personality to social groups, and, in the final decades of his life,
problems of the elderly.
Burgess focussed on patterns within a single city (the internal structure of the city), rather
than relationships among cities (systems of cities).
For all the problems and pathologies of urban life, Burgess saw cities as progressing.
He was convinced that there was an underlying logic to the social and economic structure of
cities that could be understood scientifically. He saw the city itself as the driving force behind
the region of which it was a part.
