Planning Practice & Research

Women and carers in Urban Studies: transforming cultures, reimagining cities

This special issue aims to explore contemporary challenges and experiences of women and carers in urban studies and urban spaces. It seeks to advance a transdisciplinary conversation on how gendered and caring responsibilities shape both urban life and the academic fields that study it. Centred on three interconnected streams - caring, mother(ing) and women as solo – it invites reflection on how care in its varied forms shapes everyday urban and academic realities.

Caring is a responsibility that extends beyond work (e.g. caring for children, for elders, for friends and community). Among others, some key themes are: caring and caring ethics…

• infusing (and blurring) the work/life binary,
• challenging the capitalist and neoliberal norms of contemporary academic workplaces,
• shaping the experience of urban studies as a disciplinary practice/focus, and
• shaping the experiences of and being shaped by urban places and infrastructures.

As an important subset of caring, becoming a caregiver—whether as a mother, grandmother, or other primary carer—marks a significant life stage and a profound shift in identity, priorities, and daily realities,  reshaping one's relationship with academic work and place, presenting both deep joys and substantial personal and professional challenges. Some key themes are:

• the complexities of mothering and caregiving in academia, particularly within the fields of urban studies, planning, and geography,
• common experiences including the mental load of caregiving, the tension between self-expectations and actual capacity, the impact of caring responsibilities on productivity and deadlines, the need for structural and informal support, and the implications for career progression,
• navigating shifting priorities while also confronting institutional barriers—such as reduced opportunities for advancement and unsupportive workplace cultures,
• broader structural conditions such as increasing performance pressures, budget constraints and limited funding opportunities as well as (sub)urban environments where care work is often privatised and undervalued,
• mothers’ experiences and challenges within urban places, and
• how urban environments mediate caregiving and care work.

On the other, complementary side of this caring and mother(ing) stand non-traditional households. Some key themes are:

• the increasing visibility of solo and/or childless (or childfree) living, which is potentially also changing the demographics of workplaces, cities and Urban Studies.
• the lived experience of people in the workplace and cities, acknowledging its plurality and complexity,
• the recognition of how people outside the traditional, heteronormative notions of family hold the potential to reshape what it means in particular for women and women-identifying people within urban studies, and
• new epistemological and ontological openings that these communities may inspire.

Together, these streams aim to expand urban scholarship by acknowledging the plurality of women’s and carers’ experiences in both urban spaces and the disciplines that study them. We invite contributions that engage empirically, theoretically, or creatively with these themes, and that challenge how urban studies and research institutions understand and support care in all its forms.