This article provides a brief overview of historical, theoretical, and methodological changes in urban anthropological studies, focusing on the issue of "urban community." The historical progress of urban anthropology can be understood by dividing it into two paradigms, "a social organization paradigm" and "a political economy paradigm" (LOW 1999). The former considered a city as a complex of small communities such as ethnic groups of immigrants, and argued that urban life was not so fragmented nor impersonal as Urbanists such as Wirth (1938) once described. The latter, which arose in the 1980's, sees cities differently. Urban residential areas might be regarded as a patchwork of mutually segregated ethnic communities, but city-/nation-/world-wide economy and politics would cause differences and also commonalities in residents with various ethnic or cultural backgrounds. For example, as Susser (1982) describes, a communal neighborhood movement of working class residents of multiple ethnicity emerges, partly on the basis of their daily face-to-face interaction in the street which they use as a site of their daily practice, resisting a decline in their quality of life caused by the political-economic crisis in New York City during 1970's. Sanjek (1998) also points out that community among urban residents can be developed in various fields, ranging from friendship on the street to the activities of community boards of a local district ; even the national and/or global economic and political impact divides urban population into the haves and the have-nots. These ethnographies demonstrate that urban community emerges primarily from spatial proximity and transient contacts in a common space, despite powerful influences from factors such as different individual identities and interests, and political-economical conditions. Although issues of cyber/media environment and cultural differences of spatial organizations in other cities are less discussed within a political economy paradigm, urban anthropological studies are contributing to our understanding of contemporary cities in a changing world.