Google has scanned 15 million books originally published from 1800 on. And they have also developed the Google Books Ngram Viewer. It's a tool that charts the usage of any word over time in literature and other books (Google books database). One could irresponsibly use it as a proxy for the popularity of words in literature. And I did!
This chart above shows how often "Urban Sociology" has appeared in the literature (Google database - english literature only) since 1800. It looks to me that the Chicago School have had played an important role in the rising 'popularity' of Urban Sociology*. And it looks that Urban Sociology is not as 'popular' as it used to be....
*obviously, it would be necessary to scrutinize other keywords to conclude this (such as the major researchers in the first Chicago School)
And here are some queries of other keywords of interest:
- Aging Population; Demographic Transition; Demography related words; urban mobility, housing bubble, 'Great Cities' as urban hierarchy (?), Space Syntax, GIS, urban, regional and environmental studies, urban and rural, etc.
And my favorites:
Traffic Jam:
Urban sprawl, compact city, smart city, smart growth, compact growth, New Urbanism.
