Applied Sociology Career Spotlight: Urban Planning

The Californian Department of Transportation in the USA has a cultural studies team. It’s led by an anthropologist and it includes anthropologists, archaeologists and historians. They conduct research on the city’s landscape and they analyse potential architectural sites for artefacts. They are also tasked with unearthing the city’s cultural heritage.

Gizmodo reports that the team evaluate “old maps, performing soil and geological surveys, and consulting architectural databases, both on-site and online.” They also examine how new building projects might impact on the public. Exciting use of social science – imagine what they could do with a sociologist aboard!