The aim of this course is to enable students to evaluate the emergence of urbanization, its historical development, and the transformation of modern urban structures through their social, economic, political, and spatial dimensions. Within the scope of the course, students are expected to analyze the relationships between urbanization processes and relations of production, industrialization, migration, class structures, spatial inequalities, and environmental problems. Furthermore, the course aims to develop students’ ability to interpret urban and housing issues from a critical and comparative perspective by examining the historical development of housing policies, social housing practices, urban transformation processes, and the effects of neoliberal urbanization policies on urban life.

This course examines the emergence of the urban phenomenon, its historical development, and modern urbanization processes through their social, economic, political, and spatial dimensions. Within the scope of the course, the emergence of the first cities, the cities of Antiquity, the medieval urban order, the acceleration of urbanization through industrialization, and the formation of contemporary metropolitan structures will be discussed from a historical perspective. The course emphasizes the understanding of urbanization not merely as population concentration, but as a multidimensional phenomenon closely related to relations of production, division of labor, class structures, public space, administrative organization, and cultural transformation. The course further examines industrialization, capitalist relations of production, migration movements, rural-to-urban migration, squatter settlements, unplanned urbanization, spatial inequalities, and the effects of globalization on cities. In addition, the development of modern urban planning approaches, welfare-state practices, mass housing policies, urban transformation processes, and the concept of the right to housing will be analyzed. Through examples from Europe, the United States, and Turkey, the historical transformation of housing policies will be discussed within the context of neoliberal policies, real estate markets, rent relations, and social housing practices. The course will also address the relationships between urbanization and environmental problems, sustainable urbanization, transportation policies, urban poverty, social exclusion, and quality of life. In this way, the course aims to enable students to evaluate urbanization processes and housing policies from a critical and comparative perspective within the framework of historical development, social transformation, and political-economic relations.