Contemporary urban studies engages a wide range of approaches in the analysis of the processes at work in urban areas. These approaches derive from anthropology, economics, geography, history, politics and sociology as well as from the professional experience of town planning and architecture.

Social process and the city reflects this growing cross-disciplinary engagement. This shows the important, problematic, role which cities in particular, and urban change in general have played in the growth of Australia. The overriding concern of each essay in this collection is to develop an understanding of the ways urban areas function and an awareness of how differing interpretations of 'urban phenomena' might be applied. This attention to the nature of the forces at work, and the processes these forces manifest themselves in, is extended both empirically and conceptually.

This book was first published in 1983.