Urbanization and Urban Sociology

Course content

This is a must course for the first year students in the department of City and Regional Planning. It attempts to provide an analysis of the process of urbanization in history, in developing countries and in western industrial countries at the present time while identifying the sociological processes distinctive to cities and metropolises of the modern period. Themes of urban social theory are also given throughout the course when relevant. The main dynamics that played an important role in the development of cities in the course of the history of urbanization are also explored. By focusing on the diverse economic dynamics and periods of production that lead to diverse spatial dynamics and urbanization processes, development of cities in general, and urban spatial development in particular is going to be tackled in this course. Comparative cases will be provided to display how similar and different dynamics of urbanization have been triggered by similar forces and processes throughout the history in diverse periods namely prehistory, preindustrial era, modernity and industrial capitalism, Fordism and post-Fordist era and period of neoliberal globalization. Together with these, concepts and terms relevant for an explanation of urban dynamics (e.g. social class, social inequality and socio-spatial differentiation, residential segregation, as well as suburbanization, metropolitan growth, post modern urbanism etc.) are introduced. The course will also cover such issues as major theoretical debates over space and society in urban sociology, the relatedness and interdependency of urban space; and the social organization of life in the city. In addition, this course aims to provide as much comparative material as possible, in order to view local conditions (e.g. Turkey, Ankara, Istanbul) within a wider context (the world), and expose the similarities, variations or differences between processes.