Robert E. Park

Robert E. Park was an American sociologist and a founding figure of the Chicago School of sociology, which established the systematic empirical study of cities as a central concern of American sociology. Drawing on his earlier career as a journalist, Park developed human ecology, an approach that analyzed the growth and organization of cities in terms of competition, invasion, succession, and the spatial distribution of social groups, and he directed extensive empirical studies of urban life, immigration, and race relations at the University of Chicago. His combination of theoretical ambition with close, first-hand observation of city life shaped the empirical, fieldwork-based character of much of twentieth-century American sociology.