Caregiving and Paid Employment in Suburbia: The Cases of Hamburg‐Oberbillwerder and Munich‐Freiham

Abstract

Urban planning has long been criticised for privileging the spatial needs and demands of paid employment, thus discriminating against caregivers. This critique applied especially to monofunctional suburban districts that lacked childcare and employment opportunities, complicating the everyday geographies of caregivers and care‐receivers. The spatial structure and layout of suburban settlements had their origin in stereotypical gendered role expectations in which a usually male breadwinner would commute into the city and a usually female caregiver would look after the house, garden, and children. Nowadays, combining care and paid employment has become a matter of course and a necessity for many people of all genders. Our contribution asks how scholarly critique and societal changes affect planning practice and planning rationales. We analyse two newly planned suburban districts in Germany in relation to care and its compatibility with paid employment. We aim to establish whether planners and other local decision‐makers reflect on the decade‐long critique from a care perspective and see the provision of good conditions for employed caregivers within the scope of their work. Our research draws on a qualitative content analysis of planning and media documents and expert interviews. Our findings suggest that care and supporting compatibility with paid work are important yet are largely implicit guiding principles, which might result in the impact of planning on compatibility and a fairer distribution of care tasks remaining superficial. The study reveals how care and the compatibility of paid work and caregiving are implicitly present, but rarely acknowledged, in planning processes, underscoring the structural role of urban development in shaping conditions for employed caregivers.