Urban areas concentrate economic opportunity, educational infrastructure, and social diversity in ways that have attracted successive waves of internal and international migrants. Yet urban areas have also become the primary site of a quiet but consequential crisis in family life. Housing costs have risen faster than wages in most major urban centres. Childcare remains scarce and unaffordable for large segments of the population. Informal support networks have eroded as extended families scatter across metropolitan areas. And the design logic of contemporary cities -oriented around labour markets, transport efficiency, and economic productivity- rarely makes space for the rhythms and needs of family life.
This paper examines the urban family as an analytical category and a policy object. It argues that the city is not a neutral backdrop to family life but an active force shaping whether families can form, how they function, and whether they can remain stable over time.
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