The urbanistic approach was developed by Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) and Victor Brandford (1864-1930). Both of them were from Scotland and both of them first studied biology and later in life got interested in sociology. Two of them founded the Sociological Society in London in 1903. Branford was the editor of the journal Sociological Review. Geddes saw similarities between the sciences of biology and sociology but rejected the reductionism of organicism. Geddes thought that there were parallels between biological organisms and the population of society, functions of biological organisms and activities of people in society, and between the environment of an organism and the place of living (city, town, or village) and its geography. Geddes studied cities and their function in the development and preservation of culture.

Geddes and Brandford studied how cities influenced the political, economic, and cultural shape of wider society, but also how the organization of cities influenced the lives of its inhabitants. They advocated for better planning of cities, planting trees, building better housing, cooperative agriculture, better schools, etc. Their approach was dialectic because they recognized the influence that physical environment and political, cultural, and economic organization of society can influence individuals, but, on the other hand, they saw great potential for individuals, by expressing creative freedom, to influence, in return, their physical environment and political, cultural and economic organization of society.  

American historian, theorist of architecture, and sociologist Lewis Mumford, during his stay in Britain, worked closely with Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford and even worked as a guest editor of Branford's Sociological Review. Mumford characterized his approach toward the study of society as "organic humanism." In line with that, his work was shaped by a desire to create an „organic” equilibrium in human affairs which he called “eutopia”, or the good place.

In his early work, Mumford studied how natural geographical patterns shape culture, independent of the influence of technological and economic structures and processes. The influence of the Chicago School of Sociology is visible in his commitment to convince politicians and urban planners to pay attention to how architectural and urban solutions and plans affect the social ecology of urban neighborhoods. He wanted to avoid the anomie and loss of the organic community that would result from poor planning of cities and their neighborhoods. As the biggest problems of urbanism, he saw the excessive concentration of the population in huge skyscrapers, the disappearance of public places and parks, and the excessive construction of roads and car parks. Mumford believed that technological advances in transportation and communications would lead to the proliferation of social networks and the strengthening of democracy at the regional level.

In the books The Culture of Cities (1938) and The City in History (1961), Mumford explores how the development of cities, urbanism, and architecture, as well as technology, has influenced other social, cultural, and economic patterns. In the two-volume book The Myth of the Machine (1967, 1970), he warns of the possibility that technology (megamachines) and cumbersome and inadequate cities (megalopolises) can lead to failure to meet the humanistic goals of free individual human development and quality of life in the community.

Books: 

Geddes, Patrick. City Development (1904);

     -     Cities in Evolution (1915);

Geddes, Patrick, and Victor Brandford. The Coming Polity (1917);

     -     Our Social Inheritance (1918);

Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization (1934);

     -     The Culture of Cities (1938);

     -     The City in History (1961);  

     -     The Highway and the City (1963);

     -     The Myth of the Machine, 2 vols. (1967, 1970);

     -     The Urban Prospect (1968).