ABSTRACT This article examines urban regeneration in Istanbul’s Bomonti district, focusing on the social and spatial transformations shaped by gentrification from the 1940s to the present. Using a mixed-methods approach, including on-site observations, resident surveys, and interviews with local representatives, this longitudinal study spans 13 years, with fieldwork conducted in 2012 and again in 2025, tracing changes in the urban landscape, economic structure, and redevelopment patterns over time. The study introduces an analytical framework to understand how globalization has reshaped urban space through economic shifts that stimulated housing investments and new residential typologies, including informal settlements, residences, and gated communities. Land regulation policies and earthquake-resistant construction requirements further influenced regeneration processes. Findings indicate that as upper-income groups initiated profit-driven projects in this former industrial zone, class distinctions evolved into spatial segregation, reshaping the district’s social fabric. By critically analyzing these dynamics, the investigation contributes to urban planning, urban sociology, and geography by highlighting the socio-spatial consequences of urban regeneration in rapidly transforming cities.

ABSTRACT This paper examines Muslim agency in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa and one of Europe’s southernmost borders. Inhabited by four cultures (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu), it is among Spain’s most segregated cities. Drawing on ethnographic work, the study analyzes urban space as a driver of participation. Contrary to classical urban sociology, which links civic participation to diversity and pre-existing social capital, Ceuta’s activism shows that civic energy can also emerge in isolated neighborhoods during moments of crisis marked by political polarization. This collective action, inspired by religion, seeks to create new forms of social class consciousness in a postcolonial context through a shared sense of belonging: the Ceutí (or Caballa) culture, a hybrid Mediterranean way of life that fosters coexistence among the four communities and legitimizes the compatibility between Islam and European citizenship.

The Problem: The race against the climate clock involves pouring billions into smart technology for Net-Zero goals. These high-tech solutions—from optimized grids to automated transit—are consistently failing because they forget the people. Citizens' rejection of opaque algorithmic governance results in massive implementation waste, squandering green investments. The Breakthrough: This paper introduces The Digital Trust Trap (Digital Intersubjectivity Trilemma), a new framework explaining why city-wide consensus is as vital as battery technology. Synthesizing urban sociology with data governance reveals core conflicts that doom climate initiatives before they start. The Findings: The Trap highlights three deadly conflicts: The Technocratic Trap (efficiency without ownership), The Standardization Failure (metrics ignoring local reality), and The Legitimacy Debt (prioritizing speed over public buy-in). The financial value of a project’s ESG rating is meaningless if the public doesn't trust the data. Consensus is the new carbon-neutral currency. The Solution: The solution proposes a shift to "Socio-Digital Planning"—designing civic digital spaces and auditable algorithms that treat public trust as a critical engineering requirement. Solving the Digital Trust Trap is the only way to safeguard billions in green capital and keep Net-Zero within reach.

This article analyzes the aesthetic practices of graffiti and urban interventions in the contemporary city, emphasizing their sociopolitical meanings as forms of resistance and reappropriation of public space. The objective is to understand how graffiti transforms urban surfaces into platforms for critical and contestatory discourse, problematizing the relationships between art, power, and territory. The research adopts a qualitative and interdisciplinary approach, articulating theoretical references from art studies, urban sociology, and cultural studies, as well as examining emblematic cases in different cities. The findings indicate that these interventions contribute to the democratization of artistic production, challenge spatial hierarchies, and foster debates on citizenship, collective identity, and the right to the city. Furthermore, in the digital era, graffiti engages with social media, expanding its symbolic and political reach, although it also faces processes of institutionalization and market co-optation. It is concluded that, within a context of exclusionary urbanization, these aesthetic practices redefine the urban landscape by promoting peripheral narratives and resisting global cultural homogenization.

Many artists facing unpredictable employment seek other kinds of jobs beyond their respective industry to make ends meet. Yet, aside from noting the precariousness of work in the arts, existing scholarship says little about how these workers manage their employment beyond creative work and across multiple industries, leading to an incomplete portrait of artistic working lives. Based on a two-year qualitative study of the Nashville's downtown music scene, we show how musicians assemble composite careers –complementary employment across two or more industries. We found that artists integrated creative and frontline service work in ways that were strategically useful along three lines (structural, symbolic, and social), which were directly shaped by urban resources, narratives, and networks. We show how artists assemble composite careers by drawing on geographically proximate but categorically distinct industries. While the concentration of artists working in multiple capacities may sustain and reproduce the local cultural scene, we highlight the strain they face in maintaining composite careers over time and suggest that the process of assembling this employment may exacerbate individuals’ inability to secure stable employment and livable wages. We discuss the implications of composite careers for artistic careers, precarious service work, and urban sociology.

Portugal’s housing crisis, intensified by the 2008 financial crash and subsequent austerity policies, has sparked diverse forms of resistance, including artistic expression. This article explores how music functions as a mode of protest and political articulation in response to real estate speculation and tourist gentrification, focusing on a corpus of 36 songs and 20 video clips produced between 2016 and 2024, primarily in Lisbon and Porto. Drawing on autoethnographic research and critical discourse analysis, the study examines how musicians denounce neoliberal urban transformations, express collective grievances and contribute to framing housing rights as both a political and cultural issue. It identifies three core thematic axes in these musical narratives: the commodification of housing, displacement driven by tourism and the intersection of precarity, inequality and low wages. By bridging urban sociology, cultural resistance and critical housing studies, the article highlights how music operates not only as expression but as infrastructure of protest: mobilizing affects, sustaining memory and amplifying counter-hegemonic imaginaries in contexts of deepening socio-spatial injustice.

This essay argues for ongoing critical engagement with the Chicago School of urban sociology despite its problematic foundations. Responding to Justus Uitermark, I contend that the Chicago School remains pedagogically, theoretically, and methodologically valuable when taught reflexively and in dialogue with later critiques, including the LA School. I frame the Chicago School as a flawed but provocative part of the canon for urban studies.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the social, economic, and political fabric of urban life. As cities adopt AI technologies for governance, planning, and service delivery, urban sociologists face new challenges in understanding how these systems reshape power relations, access to resources, and civic participation. This paper critically examines the sociological impacts of AI in urban contexts, focusing on seven key domains: predictive governance, labor and economic restructuring, smart city planning, housing and gentrification, the digital divide, civic engagement, and environmental justice. Drawing on recent scholarship, we explore how AI-driven systems both reflect and reinforce existing urban inequalities, particularly along racial, class, and geographic lines. We argue that while AI offers potential for more efficient and responsive urban management, it also risks deepening exclusion, eroding privacy, and marginalizing vulnerable populations. Through a sociotechnical lens, we highlight the need for equity-centered approaches to AI deployment in cities, emphasizing transparency, accountability, and inclusive design. Ultimately, this paper contributes to a growing body of urban sociology literature that interrogates the algorithmic turn in city life and calls for a reimagining of urban futures grounded in justice and democratic participation.

The article is a review of Richard Sennett’s The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities (Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2024. 328 p.), which aims at identifying the place of Sennett’s book in the intellectual context of urban sociology in the late 20th century and showing how Sennett develops the humanistic line of urban studies by rethinking this line through the visual approach. The author emphasizes the significance of the book due to its original central idea - a shift from the analysis of structures and institutions to the study of visual practices, forms of visibility, and moral aspects of perception. At the same time, the author notes the metaphorical nature of Sennett’s argumentation and the limited empirical basis of his research as close to philosophy of culture. However, the book is presented in the article as an important stage in the evolution of a postmodernist approach to the study of urban everyday life and a sociological reflection on visuality as a form of social interaction.

Abstract. The dynamic evolution of Indian urban environments has highlighted the critical role of public spaces as urban commons in shaping inclusive, sustainable, and resilient cities. This study explores the transformative potential of geospatial innovation and participatory governance in planning and managing public spaces across Indian contexts. Drawing from a comparative analysis of global frameworks—including the NSW Guide to Activation, URBACT Health & Greenspace Network, and the UN National Urban Policy Guidelines—this research integrates geospatial methodologies, such as GIS-based spatial analysis and urban morphology modelling, to assess accessibility, equity, and performance of urban public spaces. Using a series of case studies—from Jaipur’s cultural Chaupatis to the adaptive reuse of Seattle’s Gas Works Park and Paris’s Promenade Plantée—the study reveals best practices in design, management, and community-driven place making. The findings emphasize the importance of cross-sectorial collaboration, inclusive policy frameworks, and digital tools for monitoring and co- creating sustainable urban commons. By aligning environmental impact assessments, urban sociology, and frontier spatial technologies, this study proposes a holistic framework to address fragmentation in urban landscapes, promote heritage-sensitive interventions, and foster socio-economic vibrancy. The derived approach from this study aims to inform Smart City missions and urban renewal programs through a lens of equitable and green urbanism.

This article discusses the theoretical evolution of the debate on economic growth, development, and sustainability in the social sciences, particularly in sociology. This discussion covers multiple approaches, from those inspired by classical economics since the 18th century, to the debate over the alternatives proposed by dependency theory in the 20th century. It is in this debate and in various social and theoretical movements that the concept of sustainability has emerged more recently, highlighting its social and sociological aspects at the expense of its original basic link to the strict domains of the environment and environmentalism, with fundamental consequences for urban sociology and urban policies. It is the path to strengthening and affirming the sociology of sustainability as a specific field of sociology, treating the social issues as a “total social phenomenon”, and focusing on articulating its interdisciplinary dimensions. The consequences of these debates have nowadays, more than ever, a decisive impact on the construction of city models and (new) urban policies, new organizational strategies, new models of governance, and new theoretical approaches. Also, it has significant impacts on citizens’ participation and ways of life. Examples of these consequences include the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which we treat as a decisive contribution to the organization of cities, ways of life, institutional structures, and social, cultural, and economic relations. Also, the recent UNESCO model, the MIL City model, which poses new challenges for Sociology in general and for the Sociology of Sustainability in particular, must be explored in a subsequent discussion. As this is not the setting for a more extended, more intensive theoretical debate, we propose an analytical synthesis capable of generating fundamental new insights, more robust, and with an impact on sociological analysis, reinforcing the sociology of sustainability and its contributions to social intervention.

Purpose This study aims to critically examine the socio-technical, economic and governance challenges emerging at the intersection of Generative artificial intelligence (AI) and Urban AI. By foregrounding the metaphor of “the moon and the ghetto” (Nelson, 1977, 2011), the issue invites contributions that interrogate the gap between technological capability and institutional justice. The purpose is to foster a multidisciplinary dialogue–spanning applied economics, public policy, AI ethics and urban governance – that can inform trustworthy, inclusive and democratically grounded AI practices. Contributors are encouraged to explore not just what GenAI can do, but for whom, how and with what consequences. Design/methodology/approach This study draws upon interdisciplinary literature from public policy, innovation studies, digital governance and urban sociology to frame the emerging governance challenges of Generative AI and Urban AI. It builds a conceptual foundation by synthesizing insights from comparative city case studies, innovation systems theory and normative policy frameworks. The approach is interpretive and exploratory, aiming to situate AI technologies within broader institutional, geopolitical and socio-economic contexts. The study invites contributions that adopt empirical, theoretical or practice-based methodologies addressing the governance of GenAI in cities and regions. Findings This study identifies a critical gap between the rapid technological advancements in Generative AI and the institutional readiness of public governance systems – particularly in urban contexts. It finds that current policy frameworks often prioritize efficiency and innovationism over democratic legitimacy, civic trust and inclusive design. Drawing on comparative global city experiences, it highlights the risk of reinforcing power asymmetries without robust accountability mechanisms. The analysis suggests that trustworthy AI is not a purely technical attribute but a political and institutional achievement, requiring participatory governance architectures and innovation systems grounded in public value and civic engagement. Research limitations/implications As an editorial introduction, this study does not present original empirical data but synthesizes key theoretical frameworks, case studies and policy debates to guide future research. Its analytical scope is conceptual and comparative, offering a foundation for submissions that further investigate Generative and Urban AI through empirical, normative and practice-based lenses. The limitations lie in its broad coverage and reliance on secondary sources. Nonetheless, it provides an agenda-setting contribution by highlighting the urgent need for interdisciplinary research into how AI reshapes public governance, institutional legitimacy and urban democratic futures. Practical implications This editorial offers a structured framework for policymakers, urban planners, technologists and public administrators to critically assess the governance of Generative and Urban AI systems. By highlighting international case studies and conceptual tools – such as public algorithmic infrastructures, civic trust frameworks and anticipatory governance – the article underscores the importance of institutional design, regulatory foresight and civic engagement. It invites practitioners to shift from techno-solutionist approaches toward inclusive, democratic and place-based AI governance. The reflections aim to support the development of trustworthy AI policies that are grounded in legitimacy, accountability and societal needs, particularly in urban and regional contexts. Social implications The editorial underscores that Generative and Urban AI systems are not socially neutral but carry significant implications for equity, representation and democratic legitimacy. These technologies risk reinforcing existing social hierarchies and systemic biases if not governed inclusively. This study calls for reimagining trust not as a technical feature but as a relational, contested dynamic between institutions and citizens. It encourages submissions that examine how AI reshapes the urban social contract, affects marginalized communities and challenges existing civic infrastructures. The goal is to promote AI governance frameworks that are pluralistic, just and reflective of diverse societal values and lived experiences. Originality/value This editorial offers a timely and conceptually grounded intervention into the emerging field of Urban AI and Generative AI governance. By framing the challenges through Richard R. Nelson’s metaphor of The Moon and the Ghetto, this study foregrounds the gap between technical capabilities and enduring societal injustices. The contribution lies in its interdisciplinary synthesis – bridging innovation systems, AI ethics, public policy and urban governance. It introduces a critical framework for assessing “trustworthy AI” not as a technical goal but as a democratic achievement and encourages research that is policy-relevant, equity-oriented and attuned to the institutional realities of AI in cities.

This article examines how real estate advertising in urban Chile transforms housing into a symbolic commodity. Housing shapes residential imaginaries that shape aspirations of modernity, security, and community. The analysis focuses on the San Isidro neighborhood in Santiago Centro, an increasingly densified area marked by precariousness. The study addresses housing dissonance: the gap between advertising promises and lived realities of overcrowding, noise, insecurity, and social isolation. Via an interdisciplinary approach that combines urban sociology and consumer studies, this article demonstrates how advertising functions as a cultural device. It translates structural inequalities into individual desires and reinforces spatial hierarchies within neoliberal contexts at the same time. The findings reveal that advertising imaginaries mediate urban experiences. These imaginaries heighten the tensions between aspirations and precarious conditions. Ultimately, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of symbolic consumption and the affective dynamics of dwelling in Latin American cities.

Urbanization is one of the most significant social transformations of the twenty-first century, reshaping social networks, community life, and patterns of interpersonal interaction. This study examines the sociological impact of urbanization, focusing on how migration from rural to urban areas, population density, and socio-economic heterogeneity influence the structure and quality of social relationships. Drawing on social capital theory, urban sociology, and network analysis, the paper explores how traditional community bonds, often characterized by strong kinship and neighborhood ties, are weakened in urban contexts. Simultaneously, cities provide opportunities for diverse and extensive social networks, facilitating interactions across cultural, economic, and professional boundaries. The study highlights both the challenges and opportunities of urban socialization: while urban residents may experience social isolation, reduced civic engagement, and weakened neighborhood cohesion, they also benefit from broader social exposure, access to interest-based communities, and innovative forms of digital connectivity. The paper concludes that sustainable urban development must integrate social planning with economic and infrastructural growth, fostering resilient, inclusive, and engaged communities. By understanding the complex interplay between urbanization and social networks, sociologists and policymakers can better address the social dimensions of urban life and strengthen communal ties in increasingly heterogeneous urban environments

This study explores the spatial, social, and cultural dynamics of being yilli , a deeply rooted local identity in Kayseri, Turkey. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, oral histories, and spatial analysis, it examines how the yilli people negotiate urban transformation through selective adaptations to modernization while maintaining traditional social boundaries. The research shows that the yilli do not passively resist change but actively reinterpret modernization to reinforce status, kinship, and symbolic belonging. Spatial relocation and investment patterns reflect economic strategies and efforts to preserve cultural distinction amid urban expansion. The findings demonstrate that urban transformation in Kayseri is both a material and cultural process, shaped by layered histories of memory, hierarchy, and social imagination. Through the case of the yilli , the study contributes to broader debates in urban sociology and cultural geography, offering insights into how culture-centered societies adapt to and reshape modernization processes.

ABSTRACT Along with urban sociologists identified with the Chicago School, William F. Whyte in his Street Corner Society sought to understand street gangs and political networks in the poor neighborhoods of American cities, 1910–1945. To varying degrees these sociologists marginalized women. Furthermore, and despite claims that their theories could be universalized, they rarely considered cities beyond the United States. Their incomplete accounts can be enhanced by historical comparisons with the Australian city of Melbourne. In the early twentieth century, Melbourne's “larrikinesses” took a more active role in the “push” than is commonly recognized. They then took advantage of Melbourne's expanding public transport system to pursue their adventures beyond home neighborhoods. In a wonderful historical twist, the two worlds met briefly during the Pacific War when US Marines were stationed in Melbourne.

Through the ethnographic study of urban margins, this article explores the questions of statecraft that involve evoking aesthetic governmentality to ascribe illegalities onto the informalities of the margins. With an aim to understand the lived experiences of children, the article examines the role that education plays in maintaining the unequal urban order, and how it exists as a potent site for exploring the order-making function of the state. This calls for a perspectival shift that does not look at the margins but looks from there, obviating the conventional connotations of being a site of statelessness, chaos and disorder. Located in the anthropology of margins, the present article demonstrates that margins are the site that makes state functioning visible and not its failure. The article draws from our long-term engagement with a basti and several state-run schools in South Delhi, where children from the basti are enrolled. The article draws from scholarship in urban sociology to examine the site of education and finds how categories of spatial illegality and aesthetic rationality are activated to hone the earlier rational, calculative rationality of the state for its order-making purpose.

The article carries out a historical and sociological analysis of Russian urban sociological researches of the pre-revolutionary period proposing approaches to improving the quality of citizens’ life. The interest in the issues of urban environment improvement discussed by sociologists today arose at the turn of the 19th — 20th centuries as a reaction to the social problems faced by big cities of that time, including Russian cities, due to the social inequality which worsened as a result of rapid and uncontrolled urbanization. It is emphasized that a significant contribution to the sociological study of the social contradictions of urban life and the search for possible ways to eliminate them is made by Russian social thinkers sharing the idea that urbanization should not be spontaneous, but a controlled social process in the late 19th — early 20th centuries.Sociological researches by Russian social scientists seeking solutions of the social problems peculiar to big cities, are grouped around two sociological conceptions - the garden city and municipal socialism. The article defines the theoretical origins of these conceptual constructions and carries out a comparative analysis of these conceptions, thanks to what the huge heuristic potential of scientific developments created within the framework of Russian urban sociology in the pre-revolutionary period is revealed.The author demonstrates that the social problems of big cities, as well as the principles of their solution, analyzed by Russian social scientists at the turn of the 19th — 20th centuries, are highlighted by modern sociologists examining urban life. The article concludes that Russian urban sociological studies conducted in the Russian Empire are a valuable heritage for contemporary Russian and Western sociology and are an important theoretical and methodological basis for sociological researches of city and urbanization in the 21st century.

This study examines how graphic design functions as a social infrastructure within high-rise urban housing, shaping interactions, identity, and collective well-being. Urbanization has driven vertical expansion, creating new spatial and social challenges that affect community cohesion. While existing research in architecture and urban sociology has focused on spatial design and technological efficiency, this study highlights the overlooked role of visual communication as an active mediator of social relations. The research introduces the concept of Vertical Social Infrastructures, which reframes high-rise housing as a visual–social system rather than merely a physical structure. Using comparative analysis, the study explores how graphic elements, color, signage, murals, and typography can guide interaction and create shared narratives in dense residential settings. The study explicitly contributes to the field of graphic design by demonstrating how visual communication — including color, signage, murals, and typography — mediates social interaction and spatial behavior in vertical housing environments. This connection reinforces the journal’s focus on the intersections between design, media, and society, positioning graphic design as both an analytical and infrastructural framework for community engagement. The findings demonstrate that graphic design serves as a connective infrastructure, enhancing spatial legibility and fostering social engagement. By integrating theories from design studies, social infrastructure, and urban communication, this paper contributes a cross-disciplinary framework for understanding design as a medium of social sustainability. The results suggest that visual design strategies can transform vertical housing into inclusive, participatory, and emotionally resonant environments.

The article presents a review of studies conducted between 2014 and 2020 and a reference framework on urban extractivism, linking this concept to theories of classical authors in urban sociology and geography, as well as to contemporary scholars. It explores how current urban development transforms housing and public space into tradable commodities, rather than recognizing them as fundamental rights and basic needs. This process is evident in phenomena such as the subprime mortgage market, the mass construction of rental housing, gentrification, and touristification, which aim to attract wealthier residents, thereby increasing property sale or rental values, particularly in urban areas on the periphery of global capitalism, which are more susceptible to these dynamics. The study was conducted from a qualitative and hermeneutic perspective, using documentary research as the main strategy, with a dynamic sampling method that was adjusted according to the findings. Regarding the conclusions, it is observed that extractivism and neo-extractivism have managed to consolidate an academic community and form a social movement that brings together environmentalists, academics, and indigenous groups. Concerning the conceptual approach, the need for a deeper analysis of the object of study is highlighted, to determine whether there are similar practices between the logics of extractivism and neo-extractivism in the urban space. Criticisms are made of the neoliberal city model and the socio-spatial inequalities that it (re)produces, especially in Latin American cities.