Reference to the pre-industrial city, Wheatly 1971, defined urbanism as ‘that particular set of functionally integrated
institutions which were first devised some 5,000 years
ago to mediate the transformation of relatively egalitarian, ascriptive, kin-structured groups into socially stratified politically organised, territorially based societies’. This emphasis on institutional change relates the growth of cities to a major socio-political restructuring of society, which he regards as a key element in the development of civilisation.