城市不仅仅是各种现代化要素流动的场域，也是社会结构变迁的主体。通过回顾40年来中国知网和中文社会科学引文索引数据库收录的中国城市社会结构研究的相关论文，我们发现现有的中国城市社会结构研究重点关注六个方面：即城乡结构、城市消费结构、城市阶层结构、城市空间结构、城市就业结构和城市人口结构，其中城乡结构研究是研究领域的主旋律。40年来的中国城市社会结构研究大体经历了低速增长期、快速发展期和波动发展期三个阶段，这些研究先后经历了以"农村"为主要背景，到高度关注城乡结构，再到回归城市本身的过程。可以认为，今后的城市社会结构研究只有具备更开阔的全球视野和更坚实的理论基础、更加聚焦城市自身的主体性，才能增强对城市社会结构的解释力，为城市社会结构转型提供多方面理论和经验的指导。

Urban is not only the field where all kinds of modern elements flow, but also the subject of social structure transformation. By reviewing the relevant papers collected in CNKI and CSSCI, we find that China's urban social structure research in the past 40 years focuses on six aspects, that is, urban and rural structure, urban consumption structure, urban class structure, urban space structure, urban employment structure and urban population structure, in which urban and rural structure is dominant. In the past 40 years, the research on China's urban social structure has generally gone through three stages of low-speed growth, rapid development and fluctuating development, which respectively focuses on rural areas, urban and rural structure and then cities. Only with a broader global vision, a more solid theoretical basis and a greater focus on the subjectivity of a city can future studies of urban social structure understand social structure better and then provide theoretical and practical guidance for the transformation of urban social structure.