Abstract

The author analyses an approach within the framework of urban sociology, characteristic to Chicago School. This approach combined certain biological premises in understanding the city with the typical sociological approach, seeing the city as a superorganism and a product of nature, which is why it is called the ecological theory of the city. In this regard, the connection between biology and sociology, as well as the theory of Robert Ezra Park and Ernest Watson Burgess, as typical representatives of this sociological trend, will be the subject of special analysis, aiming to bring the reader closer to the ecological approach in urban sociology. The topic of particular interest is Park’s idea of the city as a product of nature, with symbiotic substructure and cultural superstructure, as well as Burgess’s idea of city growth and the theory of the concentric zones of city structure. Other issues of the ecological theory of the city were also analysed