Research in the Cities Programme

Faculty and research students in the Cities Programme form part of the 'Cities, Architecture and Urbanism' cluster within the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics. This is comprised of seven core faculty and over 20 PhD students, and a well-established MSc in City Design and Social Science. The international profile of the cluster is reflected in research and publications in interdisciplinary fields of urban sociology, architecture, urban design, cultural geography, and gender studies. PhD students researching in the fields of cities, architecture and urban studies are central to the research culture of the Cities Programme, and our doctoral students come from a range of national as well as disciplinary contexts.

Research focus

The focus of the Cities, Architecture and Urbanism cluster is the nature, transformations and implications of the spatial, social and cultural relations of cities, in a range of international contexts. In particular this involves examining how built environments are produced through interactions with other social, economic, political and cultural processes. Researchers are concerned not just with urban sociologies but also with the historical and contemporary forms of material culture made visible through architecture and urban design. Research in Cities spans spatial scales from the global, regional, urban and neighbourhood levels, down to the scale of buildings and public spaces.

The research is characterised by a diversity of methodological and epistemological approaches among the staff and students. This includes archival analysis, interpretations of textual and visual material, ethnography and semi-structured interviewing, surveys, quantitative analysis, architectural and design analysis, as well as participatory visual methodologies. Cities Researchers are committed to developing and working with new methodologies that challenge the boundaries of interdisciplinary research.