I am Sarah Kim, an urban researcher studying how housing systems shape social stratification, class identity, and unequal experiences of belonging. I earned a Master of Science in Urban Planning from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

My research focuses on the relationship between housing, social hierarchy, and urban inequality, with South Korea as an important empirical context. My master’s thesis, Beyond Shelter, examined how Korean apartment complexes developed from a state-led housing solution into both a material infrastructure of middle-class formation and a symbolic marker of social status.

My emerging research agenda examines housing-based stigma: how housing types and housing systems acquire social meanings, how these meanings shape class perception and everyday experience, and how symbolic and material inequalities are reproduced through redevelopment, housing policy, and urban change.

Methodologically, I combine qualitative interviews and attention to lived experience with spatial and computational analysis, historical inquiry, and digital discourse analysis. I am particularly interested in approaches that connect macro-level patterns and institutional structures with experiences that cannot be reduced to quantitative indicators alone.

Before and alongside my academic work, I have worked across public-sector capital planning, large-scale energy projects, and cultural programming. These experiences inform my interest in the institutions, policies, and everyday relationships through which cities are produced.