Urban Sociology

Cities aren't just collections of buildings — they're patterns of social, economic, and political life made visible in space, and this course gives you the conceptual tools to read that relationship rather than just design within it. You'll move from the classical Chicago-school models through contemporary urban theory and into the Turkish context (urbanization, gecekondu, public space), then put the frameworks to work through a poster presentation and an essay on a real urban problem. As a senior requirement in the LAUD curriculum, it's where studio intuition about place meets sociological argument, so the policy and livability questions you raise here tend to shape your graduation project.