Urban sociology is the sociological study of cities and urban life. One of the field’s oldest sub-disciplines, urban sociology studies and examines the social, historical, political, cultural, economic, and environmental forces that have shaped urban environments. Like most areas of sociology, urban sociologists use statistical analysis, observation, archival research, census data, social theory, interviews, and other methods to study a range of topics, including poverty, racial residential segregation, economic development, migration and demographic trends, gentrification, homelessness, blight and crime, urban decline, and neighborhood changes and revitalization. Urban sociological analysis provides critical insights that shape and guide urban planning and policy-making.
William Julius Wilson is an American sociologist, a professor at Harvard University, and an author of works on urban sociology, race, and class issues. Laureate of the National Medal of Science, he served as the 80th President of the American Sociological Association, was a member of numerous national boards and commissions. He identified the importance of neighborhood effects and demonstrated how limited employment opportunities and weakened institutional resources exacerbated poverty within American inner-city neighborhoods.
Socioeconomics is the social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. In general it analyzes how modern societies progress, stagnate, or regress because of their local or regional economy, or the global economy.
Commodification is the process of transforming inalienable, free, or gifted things into commodities, or objects for sale. It has a connotation of losing an inherent quality or social relationship when something is integrated by a capitalist marketplace. Concepts that have been argued as being commodified include broad items such as the body, intimacy, public goods, animals and holidays.
Urban studies or pre-urban planning education is based on the study of the urban development of cities and regions—it makes up the theory portion of the field of urban planning. This includes studying the history of city development from an architectural point of view, to the impact of urban design on community development efforts. Urban studies is a major field of study used by paraprofessional practitioners of urban planning, it helps with the understanding of human values, development, and the interactions they have with their physical environment.
The American Sociological Review is a bi-monthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all aspects of sociology. It is published by SAGE Publications on behalf of the American Sociological Association. It was established in 1936. It is along with American Journal of Sociology considered one of the top journals in sociology.
Lifestyle enclave is a sociological term first used by Robert N. Bellah et al. in their 1985 book, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. In the glossary of the book, they provide the following definition: "A lifestyle enclave is formed by people who share some feature of private life. Members of a lifestyle enclave express their identity through shared patterns of appearance, consumption, and leisure activities, which often serve to differentiate them sharply from those with other lifestyles." This term is contrasted with community, which Bellah et al. claim is characterized by social interdependence, shared history, and shared participation in politics.
Janet Lippman Abu-Lughod was an American sociologist who made major contributions to world-systems theory and urban sociology.
Xavier de Souza Briggs is an American educator, social scientist, and policy expert, known for his work on economic opportunity, social capital, democratic governance, and leading social change. He has influenced housing and urban policy in the United States, contributing to the concept of the "geography of opportunity," which examines the consequences of housing segregation, by race or economic status, for the well-being and life prospects of children and families. He is a former member of the Harvard and MIT faculties, currently a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Robert J. Sampson is the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor at Harvard University and Director of the Social Sciences Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. From 2005 through 2010, Sampson served as the Chair of the Department of Sociology at Harvard. In 2011–2012, he was elected as the President of the American Society of Criminology.
Xiangming Chen served as the founding dean and director of urban and global studies and director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, from 2007 to 2019. He is currently the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Global Urban Studies and Sociology at Trinity College. Prior to this, Chen served as assistant to full professor of sociology and adjunct professor of political science and urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Patrick Sharkey is an American urban sociologist and criminologist. He has been Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University since 2019. He was formerly Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at New York University, with an affiliation at NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
Scandinavian Political Studies is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering political science in the Nordic countries published by Wiley-Blackwell. The current joint editors-in-chief are Maximilian Conrad, Silja Bára R. Ómarsdóttir, and Stefanía Óskarsdóttir.
Mario Luis Small is a sociologist and Quetelet Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. Small's research interests include urban poverty, inequality, personal networks, and qualitative and mixed methods. Small was previously a faculty member at Harvard University, University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
Gentrification, the process of altering the demographic and socioeconomic composition of a neighborhood usually by decreasing the percentage of low-income minority residents and increasing the percentage higher-income residents, has been an issue between the residents of minority neighborhoods in Chicago who believe the influx of new residents destabilizes their communities, and the gentrifiers who see it as a process that economically improves a neighborhood. Researchers have debated the significance of its effects on the neighborhoods and whether or not it leads to the displacement of residents.
Camille Z. Charles is an American sociologist. She serves as Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences, Professor of Sociology, Africana Studies & Education and Director of the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She served as the first chair of Penn's Africana Studies Department, founded in 2012.
A concentrated disadvantage is a sociological term for neighborhoods with high percentages of residents of low socioeconomic status. It is expressed as the percent of households located in census tracts with high levels of concentrated disadvantage.
Malene Freudendal-Pedersen is professor of urban planning at Aalborg University and has an interdisciplinary background linking sociology, geography, urban planning and the sociology of technology. Her research has been strongly inspired by the mobilities turn.
Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown is a 2008 book by sociologist Javier Auyero and anthropologist Débora Swistun. Its subject is the impact of pollution and toxicity on the residents of Flammable, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The book is a contribution to the field of collective action and mobilization regarding environmental suffering. It was first published in Spanish as Inflamable. Estudio de sufrimiento ambiental and translated to English in 2009. It won the Charles Tilly Award for Best Book in 2010.
Koray Caliskan is a Turkish economic sociologist and organizational designer. He is a tenured professor at Parsons School of Design, The New School, Associate Editor of the Journal of Cultural Economy, the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Design Strategies. He is the founder of Mamame, a social innovation project bringing together the organizational form of cooperative and limited liability company in economizing under-represented women’s labor, which won the Entrepreneurship of the Year Award in 2017 from Microsoft Turkey. He is the co-founder of The Wrong Department, an international strategic design studio with office in London and New York City. He is married and has two children, living in Brooklyn, New York City.
