社区概念自腾尼斯首创以来，成了社会学中使用频繁，歧义最多的术语之一。每一个研究者根据自己的需要，对出现的无数个关于社区的定义进行不同的解说。美国社会学家G.A.Hillery在收集了有关社区的94个定以后做出结论：“除了人包含于社区这一概念内之外，有关社区的性质，没有完全相同的解释”他认为，大多数社会学家认同的社区概念应包括社会互动、地理区域和共同关系三个特征。[1] 《新社会学辞典》指出：社区一词是指称人们的集体，这些人占有一个地理区域，共同从事经济活动和政治活动，基本上形成一个具有某些共同价值标准和相互从属的感情的自治的社会单位，包括地理区域、互动关系和共同情感三个特征。[2]从这些较具代表性的社区定义中可以发现，社区规模和分类标准的确定无疑是争论的热点。F-腾尼斯用二分法，从人类结合的现实中抽象出两种理想类型：共同体与社会，又称“礼俗社会”和“法理社会”。[3] 而目前应用性的分类主要有两种。A.Bertrand的Regional Community概念，符合此一概念特征的社区可以是大都市圈、若干县、几个省，甚至几个相邻国。而R.Redfield则提出Little Community的概念，与词一概念相对应的可以是乡村的若干个自然村，也可以是都市里的住宅小区或若干街区的邻区。

　　这些研究绝大多数是以发达国家的城市特别是英美城市为背景的，对发展中国家的关注明显偏少，从而在一定程度上影响了结论的准确性。Burgess,E.W 著名的同心圆带城市空间结构模式，对城市空间结构的划分与目前中国城市空间结构的分布差异较大。以上海市的小区分布为例，从房价等高线中可以发现一定的规律性：1. 2000元/㎡，多层，是征用农田而建成的最普遍的新建住宅和低档商品房，其中住户大多是动迁户和低收入家庭。2. 3000元/㎡，于2000元/㎡的房屋相比，交通条件好，市政设施以及生活配套设施较好，该范围基本在内环线外3-4公里地带内。3. 4000元/㎡，主要是中山环路地带，是市区成熟区。[5] 4. 中山环路以内的价位则更高。由此可见，对于中国城市社区发展的研究应当结合具体实际。正如W.Flanagan指出的“必须少关注宏大理论，多关注当地行动者在变迁中的选择。”

Since Ferdinand Tonnies’s first use of the concept of community, the word community has become one of the most frequently used terms in sociology with a large number of multifarious understandings. Every researcher defines the term differently in accordance with their specific needs. American sociologist G. A. Hillery concluded:” Except that people are included in the concept, there is no other complete identical explanations.” His study reported the use of some 94 definitions of the term, of which the most salient were locality, social interaction and common tie. [1] In the New Dictionary of Sociology, the term of community is defined as a group of people in a locality that share common economic and political activities, forming a autonomous social unit that has common shared value and mutual bonds of emotion and obligation, characteristic of locality, interaction and mutual bonds of emotion. [2] These representative definitions indicate that community scale and classifying criterion are the focuses of controversies. Ferdinand Tonnies had made a distinction from reality between two ideal types of social groups, community and society, or Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. [3] There are two major applicable classifications at present. The Regional Community concept proposed by A. Bertrand refers to metropolis, several counties, provinces or even several neighboring countries. The Little Community concept brought forward by R. Redfield refers to some natural villages in the countryside, a residential area or some blocks in urban cities.

Most of these researches were done on cities in developed countries, American and British cities in particular with little attention paid to developing countries; the accuracies of their conclusions are affected to some extent by this negligence. Burgess. E. W’s famous concentric zone theory is at odds with the city space structural distributions in China. Take the residential districts in Shanghai as an example, from the contour line of the housing price we found out that: 1. 2,000 yuan/㎡, multi-floor, the most common and low-end commercial housing built on farm lands, inhabitants are mostly those whose own housings were removed by the government or low income families. 2. 3,000 yuan/㎡, compared with 2,000 yuan/㎡ housing, it has better transportation, municipal facilities and living conditions, such housing are mostly located three to four kilometers outside the inner ringroad. 3. 4,000 yuan/㎡, mainly along the Zhongshan ringroad, forms the maturation zone in the city. 4. Housing inside the Zhongshan ringroad is even higher. Therefore, studies about the development of China’s urban community should take into considerations of China’s specific circumstances, just as W. Flanagan had pointed out:” we must concern less with the grand unified theories, but more with the choices made by the mover during changes.”