THE AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Volume XX MARCH 1915 Number 5
THE CITY: SUGGESTIONS FOR THE INVESTIGATION
OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN THE CITY
ENVIRONMENT
ROBERT E. PARK
University of Chicago
It will be convenient for the point of view proposed in this paper to regard the city, not as a mere congeries of persons and social arrangements, but as an institution.
An institution, according to Sumner, consists of a "concept and a structure." By concept, which he further defines as "an idea, notion, doctrine, interest," he means organized attitudes supported by their appropriate sentiments. "The structure," he adds, "is a framework, or apparatus, or perhaps only a number of functionaries set to co-operate in prescribed ways at a certain juncture. The structure holds the concept and furnishes the instrumentalities for bringing it into the world of facts and action in a way to serve the interests of men in society."[1]
The point is that an institution is a section of corporate human nature plus the machinery and the instrumentalities through which that human nature operates.
With this conception of an institution we can think of the city, that is to say, the place and the people, with all the machinery, sentiments, customs, and administrative devices that go with it,
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