Scholars of the Chicago School originally sought to answer a single question: how did an increase in urbanism during the time of the Industrial Revolution contribute to the magnification of contemporary social problems? Sociologists centered on Chicago due to its 'tabula rasa' state, having expanded from a small town of 10,000 in 1860 to an urban metropolis of over two million in the next half-century. Along with this expansion came many of the era's emerging social problems – ranging from issues with concentrated homelessness and harsh living conditions to the low wages and long hours that characterized the work of the many newly arrived European immigrants. Furthermore, unlike many other metropolitan areas, Chicago did not expand outward at the edges as predicted by early expansionist theorists, but instead 'reformatted' the space available in a concentric ring pattern. As with many modern cities the business district occupied the city center and was surrounded by slum and blighted neighborhoods, which were further surrounded by workingmens' homes and the early forms of the modern suburbs. Urban theorists suggested that these spatially distinct regions helped to solidify and isolate class relations within the modern city, moving the middle class away from the urban core and into the privatized environment of the outer suburbs.