The Milky Way's disk in the age of Gaia

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I propose to investigate the properties of the Milky Way's disk and from this deduce how our home in the Universe formed and evolved over cosmic time. After a century of detailed study, many of the most basic properties of the Milky Way are still poorly understood. This includes its mass, how this mass is distributed from the center to the outskirts and how much of it is dark matter, how many stars are formed at different epochs and with what chemical properties, and what spiral structure---so clear when we look at other galaxies---looks like in the Milky Way and what effect it has on the motions of stars. New stellar surveys that measure the distances, motions, ages, and chemical abundances of large numbers of stars are being conducted now that will vastly expand the available data for investigating the properties of the Milky Way.