New Spatial Arrangements for Family Living? Transaction Costs of Care, Education, and Mobility in New Suburban Housing Districts.

As cities exploit the potential for inner-city densification and curb unsustainable peripheral expansion, creating new inner-city living spaces becomes more challenging. Since 2010, there has been a resurgence in suburban living and planning actions. The paper examines the spatial strategies used in recent suburban expansions aimed at providing an “ideal” suburban setting for today’s family life through master design planning and infrastructure development. Modern suburban planning of housing districts integrates multifunctional hubs and aims to provide more sustainable mobility solutions. At the same time, it continues to echo earlier patterns, such as single-use zoning and residential-centric designs. Building on debates surrounding refiguration of spaces, we analyse how suburban planning reflects and perpetuates spatial inequalities, stabilizing traditional socio-economic structures while introducing incremental changes. By linking spatial arrangements to economic activities, this study highlights tensions between stability and change, emphasizing the persistence of territorial and network spatial logics alongside emerging concepts like the “15-Minute City.” The findings underline the importance of addressing the socio-economic impacts of spatial arrangements in planning research and design. This paper contributes to discussions on spatial inequalities and refiguration by illustrating how suburban planning practice stabilizes spatial and economic practices only for a very limited number of families that live according to a specific family model.