The City of Greater Angkor in Modern Cambodia incorporates settlement forms that are found in rural Khmer settlement throughout the region. This thesis argues that the mode of urbanization found at Angkor, termed low-density urbanism, allows for the maintaining of more parochial forms of identity. By combining the analysis of Angkor with analysis of Mayan examples of low-density urbanism, this thesis further argues that this type of urbanism is uniquely suited to preserving rural identities and lifeways within urban society