Professorship of Urban Sociology

The Professorship of Urban Sociology is integrated into the Institute of Sociology at Chemnitz University of Technology, which consists of five professorships in total.
Our staff offers courses in the Curricula Bachelor Sociology (BA) and Master Sociology (MA).

Urban Sociology analyses the spatial organisation of modern societies. Our six semester BA programme covers the basic principles of sociological theories and specific scientific methods. In the consecutive MA programme, these research competences are consolidated, and the students develop an application-oriented approach to spatial analysis and spatial planning (urban and regional development, infrastructure planning). The MA specialisation ‘Work and Life in Urban Spaces’ combines topics and methods of Urban Sociology with those of Sociology of Work and Industry.

In a formal scientific sense, the notion space describes the ”possibility of being together” (Immanuel Kant 1724-1804), i. e. a co-presence of processes and structures that can only be perceived in a spatial and temporal order. The formal universalism of space is a concept of theory development that applies to many disciplines of the natural sciences and the humanities. Kant characterised it as a cognitive a priori and, thus, argued similarly to modern neuroscience. In contrast to that, socialisation theories, represented, e. g., by Jean Piaget (1896-1980), tend to refer to space as an acquired cultural a priori.

Sociology defines social space as the context in which human actors experience and organise their everyday life. An action-theoretical model considers social space as the constellation of objects and individuals with all their relations and interactions. Any settlements as well as any other regions are spaces of everyday life in which people organise their lives: They dwell, work and pursue their education there. They participate in public life, maintain relationships with friends and relatives, work out, relax, and do many more activities. The spatial scope of many people in late-modern societies is extending, and their relations to work, family and tourism have assumed global dimensions.

The design of social spaces in functionally differentiated societies is partly transferred from private contexts to the competences of the state and professionals (e. g. architects, designers, planners, etc.) who operate as the creators of spatial environment in the social world. An effective cooperation between sociologists and planners is based on mutual interests and disciplinary interferences including the involvement of those whose lifestyle will be affected by the respective spatial changes. The resulting participation schemes often become a subject matter of sociological research as well.