Surveying older and more recent German social topographical research, the study focuses on those methodological problems, research possibilities and directions, which are closely related to the social historical investigation of a late medieval urban society. First, tax registers are in the centre of the discussion: first and foremost, issues of how to handle them and how to evaluate the results of the analysis. It is important, since the relative state of wealth of the burghers that can be detected with the help of these tax registers suggest only limited information about the real incomes and actual living standard of the people who were behind the numbers in the registers. Therefore, the seemingly non-existent riches does not necessarily means the poverty of the given individuals. In addition, as a second step, one should have a closer look at the urban space itself in which these burghers owned their burgages and houses. The types of town books typical for the Baltic Sea area (especially for Lübeck and some of the neighbouring towns) allow us not only an insight into the properties of the citizens, but at the same time also provide us certain details concerning the building structures of these towns. The study also addresses the results of confronting classical social topography with the social-spatial phenomena that strengthen the social geographical mobility within urban societies. Placing the different methods parallel to each other and using a critical approach to traditional research exclusively based on the analysis of the tax registers, the study suggests to look beyond the numbers and follow a wider perspective with an emphasis on the different social structural processes in order to grasp the actions and considerations of the social groups active in the urban space, and thus to gain a livelier social topographical picture about a given medieval urban community.