A Study on the Rise of the Urban Class and Changes in Social Structure during Modern Urbanization
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Abstract
Accelerated modern urbanization reshaped class structures by weakening traditional agrarian identity boundaries and creating new mechanisms of occupational mobility. This study establishes a multidimensional analytical framework integrating historical bibliometrics, social network analysis, and comparative case analysis to examine the rise of urban classes and social structural change from 1850 to 1950. Population census data, occupational registration files, and social organization records from representative cities were collected and standardized, and the urban class was divided into commercial asset holders, professional and technical personnel, and industrial workers. Network analysis was used to identify class interaction nodes, mobility paths, and the changing strength of cross-class connections. The results show that the overall size of the urban class increased markedly, with professional and technical personnel exhibiting the most rapid expansion, closely associated with technical education and demand for engineers. The findings reveal the internal logic of urban structural reorganization and provide a data-driven spatial reference for urban governance, communication infrastructure planning, and propagation-aware urban service networks.
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