Dr. Pınar Çobanyılmaz Öztürk, Dr. Alkan Üstün

Program Directors

Cities are the stage where societies continue their existence while being the phenomena that are socially produced in interaction with society and shape the social structure to the same extent. Expressing more than just a physical space, the city is considered as a socio-spatial pattern in such an approach. For this reason, social events form an integral part of the places where they take place, affect, and are affected.

Therefore the demographics, class, and identity characteristics of the matter constitute the social structure make the society an adequately heterogeneous structure that consists of different aspects of social processes, and their urban/spatial manifestations bring along a very complex socio-spatial structure. While this structure sometimes includes deepened problem areas, sometimes it contains solutions and opportunities.

Urban and Community Studies Programme intends to trace the problems that the socio-spatial structure presents and the underlying causes, dynamics, and results, to produce alternative approaches and solutions, and to explore possible opportunities. In this context; From the political economy that colonizes the living spaces of the existing urbanization processes, paving the way for displacement and dispossession, to the socio-spatial transformation triggered by (forced) migration, from the political and ideological mechanisms that erode the social and spatial publicity, to the social gender equality, ignoring the disadvantaged groups and minority identities in space. All studies which reveal the relationship between the city, society, and space, from the othering urban policies and the urban social movements that all these results from, will be examined within the programme.

Urban and Community Studies Working Group Programme aims to contribute to the literature by preparing scientific researches, publications, and reports on these socio-spatial processes, and to provide opportunities for sharing platforms with events such as seminars, interviews, symposiums.

Dr. Pınar Çobanyılmaz Öztürk

She received her undergraduate degree from Gazi University, Department of City and Regional Planning in 2008. In 2011, she completed her master’s degree at Gazi University with her thesis on Climate Change and Urban Resilience. Between 2012 and 2018, she worked as a research assistant and continued her doctoral studies at the Department of City and Regional Planning at the Middle East Technical University. Pınar Çobanyılmaz Öztürk worked on Urban Social Movements in her doctoral thesis; climate change and urban resilience, right to the city, urban opposition, politics of space, megaprojects and urban transformation, planning theories are among the academic fields of study. She is currently working as a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Urban Studies. Therefore she is the coordinator of the working group programme of Institute of Urban Studies. Lastly, she was part of the projects of Climate Change Guide for Municipalities, Green Infrastructure Guide for Municipalities and Disaster Resilient Cities Guide for Municipalities.

Dr. Alkan Üstün

He graduated from Hacettepe University, Faculty of Letters, Department of Sociology in 2009, and Anadolu University, Faculty of Economics, Department of Public Administration in 2011. He completed his master’s degree in MSc Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Southampton, where he received a scholarship from the Ministry of Education, in 2013 with a merit degree. He completed his doctorate in Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Department of Sociology, with his thesis titled “Examples of Urban Transformation in the World: Fuzzy Set Ideal Type Analysis and Comparative Case Study”. She works in the fields of urban sociology, urban transformation, climate change sociology, and mathematical sociology. He still works at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology.