Progress in Human Geography 29, 4 (2005) pp.

413–436

Households matter: the quiet

demography of urban transformation
Stefan Buzar,* Philip E. Ogden and Ray Hall
Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London,
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK

Abstract: During the last three decades, the household has become the focus of a wide range of
sociodemographic processes, including the destabilization of traditional patterns of marriage,
cohabitation and divorce; the growing fluidity of ties of kin and friendship; and increasingly
complex transitions through the life course. However, these dynamics – which are often
summarized under the common heading of the ‘second demographic transition’ – have been
marginalized in the mainstream geographical literature. In this paper, we draw attention to the
extensive, albeit fragmented, body of sociological, economic, feminist and geographical insights
into the changing social geometry of the household. Recent developments in these domains have
affirmed the pivotal role of the household in shaping the geographies of gender, home and everyday
life. We underline the importance of households as agents of urban transformation, arguing in
favour of the further incorporation of household demography into the interpretation of
contemporary urban problems and trends.

Key words: cities, everyday life, households, reurbanization, second demographic transition.

I Introduction volatility of the household scale ... should not

Four years ago, Progress in Human Geography
hosted a vigorous debate about the role of
households in the social production of scale.
Marston’s (2000) comprehensive argument in
favour of the scalar centrality of the domestic
domain was countered by Brenner (2001),
who emphasized the ‘scalar structurations’
of social space, which ‘involve relations of
hierarchization and rehierarchization among
vertically differentiated spatial units’ (p. 603).
Marston and Smith’s (2001) subsequent
response to Brenner maintains that ‘the
argument about construction, stability and
be smothered in the cot just because it looks
strange to some people’ (p. 618). They
provide further elaboration of Marston’s
original case about the simultaneity of social
reproduction and consumption at the house-
hold level. All three contributions have drawn
on a wider body of work on the political and
social dimensions of scale (see, for instance,
Cox, 1996; Delaney and Leitner, 1997; Taylor,
1984; 1999).
Although these debates have provided
important insights into the relationship
between households, scale and the social

*Authorfor correspondence. Present address: School of Geography and the Environment, Mansfield Road,
Oxford OX1 1DP, UK; e-mail: stefan.buzar@chch.ox.ac.uk

© 2005 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd 10.1191/0309132505ph558oa

414 Households matter
production of space, they have paid little
attention to the parallel body of knowledge
about the social, economic, cultural and
demographic character of the household
per se. In this paper, we interpolate the key
literatures on these subjects, with the aim of
emphasizing the conceptual importance of
household demography in understanding
contemporary patterns of urban transforma-
tion in the developed world. These relation-
ships have often been marginalized in the
geographical mainstream, in spite of the
extensive demographic transformation of
developed-world households during the past
three decades, involving trends such as: new
patterns of marriage, cohabitation and divorce;
improved life expectancy; falling fertility
rates; a wider spectrum of ties of kin and
friendship; and increasingly complex transi-
tions of the individual through different
household arrangements (Kuijsten, 1995;
Friedlander et al., 1999). There is evidence to
suggest that such sociodemographic processes
have played a crucial role in the production of
postindustrial urban change, especially with
respect to the revitalization of inner-city
areas. We argue that a deeper understanding
of these dynamics can improve the quality of
social, cultural and economic theorization
within geography.
Our argument is based on a selection of
published sources and contributions from the
relevant disciplines. It develops and connects
briefer reviews which prefaced empirical
studies of household changes in the UK and
France (for example, see Hall et al., 1999;
Ogden and Hall, 2000; 2004). Much of this
work stems from the premise that contempo-
rary population studies are ‘shifting their
attention away from the individual and onto
the level of living arrangements, families, and
households’ (van Imhoff et al., 1995: 1), due to
the deepening relationship between demo-
graphic processes and household change, as
well as recent ‘impressive’ developments
in the ‘number and composition of house-
holds in many countries, especially in Europe’
(p. 2). Such trends correspond to recent
developments in the demographic literature,
particularly on migration, as for instance,
Portes’ (1997) outline of ‘immigration issues
for the next century’ which singles out house-
holds and gender as one of the ‘research issues
with significant theoretical potential’ (p. 812).
The transformation of household struc-
tures in postindustrial countries has been
related to a broader set of population dynam-
ics, which are often summarized under the
common umbrella of the ‘second demo-
graphic transition’ (van da Kaa, 1987; 1994;
Lesthaeghe, 1995). In addition to providing an
explanatory framework for contemporary
processes in many developed-world cities,
this process also holds some relevance for
urban centres in the developing world (Clark,
1987; Wallerstein and Smith, 1992; Yi et al.,
1994; de Vos, 1995; Fargues, 1997; Pilon
et al., 1997; Lawson, 1998; Champion, 2001).
As we have argued elsewhere (Ogden and
Hall, 2004), the key component of the sec-
ond demographic transition is the widening
gap between total population and household
numbers, accompanied by declining house-
hold sizes, falling fertility rates, and a wider
palette of family and domestic situations.
Most of these processes emanate from the
household scale, which has acted as a vessel
for the increasingly fluid networks of kin and
friendship. At the same time, the domestic
realm is gaining growing theoretical and
practical prominence as a site of noncapitalist
economic production (Gibson-Graham, 1996;
Smith, 2002).
Recent insights into the relationship
between population dynamics and gentrifica-
tion (see Sassen, 1991; Ley, 1996; Myers,
1999) have opened the path for investigating
the urban spatial implications of household-
level demographic change. These contribu-
tions supplement a wider body of work about
the connections between household trans-
formation and migration processes (see Frey
and Kobrin, 1982; Massey, 1990; Halfacree,
1995; Boyle and Shen, 1997; Chant, 1998;
Ishikawa, 1999; Nilsson, 2001). Such litera-
tures often point to the pivotal role of a

selected set of sociodemographic groups in
revitalizing derelict urban areas. For instance,
the early gentrification of the London
Docklands was fuelled by the inmigration of
young single professionals (Hall and Ogden,
1992), while the ‘renaissance’ of some
developed-world cities has been aided, among
other forces, by the sociocultural agency of
gender, sexual and ethnic minorities
(Markusen, 1981; Knopp, 1990; Warde, 1991;
Rothenberg, 1995; Taylor, 1992; Lauria and
Knopp, 1985; Lyons, 1996; 1999; Bondi, 1999).
However, the incorporation of household
demography into the urban geography litera-
ture has been hindered by the emergence of
new patterns of household formation and
transformation in the developed world.
Therefore, this paper uses the second demo-
graphic transition as a pathway into the urban
implications of household transformation.
Although the main thrust of our argument lies
in the domain of urban spatial change, we
have decided to preface that discussion with
separate reviews of the population, everyday,
economic and gender ‘geographies’ of the
household, in that order. Having concluded
that the deinstitutionalization of traditional
family and marriage behaviours lies at the
core of broader population changes in devel-
oped countries, we examine the manner in
which contemporary demographic change
has affected the social geographies of
everyday life. This has been supplemented
by a review of the multiple connections
between household economies, employment
and mobility patterns, in light of the changing
structure of gender and family relations.
Throughout the paper, we argue that
focusing on individual- or national-level
patterns of production and consumption can
understate the complexity of socio-economic
restructuring in developed, postindustrial
countries, which have been experiencing the
second demographic transition (developing
countries have been omitted from the
discussion, due to the greater complexity and
diversity of demographic trends). This corre-
sponds to Fishman’s (1990) contribution,
Stefan Buzar et al. 415
which has been one of the few to provide a
direct conceptual link between households
and urban space. Fishman contends that the
spatial organization of urban functions and
forms reflects the spatial agency of the
personal contacts and consumption patterns
of the household structures that occupy
them. As a result, our concluding discussion
emphasizes the conceptual need for ‘populat-
ing’ urban geography with the increasing
complexity of social relationships and eco-
nomic arrangements at the household scale.
II The second demographic transition
in the developed world: contingencies
and implications
Astonishingly, what was thirty years ago the
obligatory entrée: formal marriage, has shifted
... to the far less enviable position of an
optional dessert. (Kuijsten, 1996: 141)
The second demographic transition has been
contingent on the deinstitutionalization of the
nuclear family, as the last few decades have
seen a dramatic shift in the social function and
structure of this, traditionally the main unit of
kinship in the developed world (Lesthaeghe,
1995; van da Kaa, 2001; Macunovich, 2002).
As early as 1976, Kobrin noted that ‘the
nuclear family as it is now constituted, and is
now ordinarily studied, will become a less
central social institution’ (1976: 137). Weiss
(1997) has observed that ‘despite its firm
roots in nature and its antiquity in human
society, the future of the family institution has
been recently put into question’ (p. 120). The
transformation of social and kinship relations
within the family is felt through a much wider
array of economic, political and societal struc-
tures, as highlighted by Todd’s (1985) argu-
ment about the interdependence of political
ideology and the anthropological character of
the family. While Inglehart (1997) locates
these changes within the context of a broader
‘post-modern’ shift from ‘materialist’ to ‘post-
materialist’ values in the developed world,
Riley and McCarthy’s (2003) contribution
has opened the space for connecting the
416 Households matter
postmodern condition with recent develop-
ments in demography as a whole, in theoretical,
epistemological and methodological terms.
Although Wall (1995) notes that ‘it is
remarkable how little variation there has been
between pre-industrial times, the end of the
nineteenth century, and the latter part of the
twentieth century in the frequency with
which individuals reside in family groups’ (p.
49), some authors have shown that recent
changes of family patterns have deeper, long-
term roots. Zhao’s study of Victorian England
found that the decline in fertility ‘led to a sub-
stantial reduction in the number of children,
siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts, nephews
and nieces available to the individual’, while
improvements in mortality ‘brought about an
increasing vertical extension in a person’s kin
connections. The kinship network that
emerged from these changes had probably
never existed before’ (Zhao, 1996: 269–70).
Fertility and mortality rates are no less central
to Reher’s (1997) historical investigation of
family structures in Spain, although their
decline has occurred only in the last quarter
of the twentieth century. Despite noting that
the ensuing transformation of society has
been ‘little short of revolutionary’ (p. 279),
Reher points out that the Spanish family is still
managing to retain its ‘traditional’ nature, as
evidenced by the stubbornly low rates of
cohabitation and divorce.
The anthropological distinction between
the notions of ‘family’ and ‘household’ has
provided an important basis for understanding
the growing conceptual divergence between
these two structures (see Burch, 1967). Of no
less importance is the decoupling of ‘home’
and ‘household’, through the realization that
kinship and coresidence in the domestic group
are not necessarily mutually interchangeable.
In some cases, a single dwelling may contain
several households, while in others one
household may divide its time between
different homes in different locations (Ryder,
1992; Troy, 1995; but see also Bonvalet,
2003). Changing sociocultural attitudes
towards the formation, dissolution and nature
of human relationships lie at the heart of these
household transformations (Ogden and Hall,
2004).
The decentring of traditional family struc-
tures has created new patterns of marital
behaviour, cohabitation and divorce (Brannen
and Collard, 1982). This includes the post-
ponement of marriage, rising divorce rates
and increases in the average childbearing
age (Kuijsten, 1995). According to Haskey
(1993), the 1970s marked a radical turning
point in the demography of marriage in most
European countries, expressed through a
drop in the frequency and length of marital
unions. Aside from the improvement of living
standards and changing social expectations,
these changes can be attributed to the
emergence of cohabiting households, and the
reaching of marriageable age by the genera-
tions born after the war (Haskey, 1993). A
considerable body of evidence suggests that
cohabitation acts as a preparation or replace-
ment for marriage (Zheng, 2000). In some
northern European countries, the share of
cohabiting unions within the total number of
couples exceeds 20%, while this percentage is
less than 5 in the Mediterranean countries
and Japan (Martin and Kats, 2003: 10).
Cliquet (1991) and Sardon (1992) provide
statistical evidence for the widespread ten-
dency of falling marriage rates across Europe,
although they are quick to note that the
intensity of this process has varied across
different temporal and spatial contexts.
Other authors have found a similar situation
in North America, Australia, Japan and other
developed countries (Kobrin, 1976; Gober,
1990; Troy, 1995; Fincher, 1998; Retherford
et al., 2001). Scandinavia took an early lead in
the ‘postmodernization’ of marriage, although
analogous developments have been observed
in western Europe, Australia and North
America alike, and to a lesser extent in the
Euro-Mediterranean and postsocialist coun-
tries (Hall, 1986; Telgarsky and Struyk, 1990).
Lewis’s (2001) investigation of the history and
sociology of marriage is particularly significant
in this context, because she connects the

decline of the ‘male breadwinner model
family’ with the shift from ‘public to private
morality’. Although Lewis maintains that
marriage is still a powerful institution, it ‘has
been disengaged from other social structures
such as the law’ (p. 23).
In most developed-world countries, the
past few decades have seen a steady drop of
average household size, and rapid increases in
the numbers of single parents and
one-person households (Haskey, 1996; Rey,
1998; Hall et al., 1999). Although one-person
households constituted 18 and 13%, respec-
tively, of the total number of Italian and
British households in 1970, the same propor-
tions increased to 24 and 30% in 2000 (see
Figure 1). During the same period, mean
household size decreased from 3.5 to 2.8
persons per household in Italy, and from 2.9
to 2.5 in Great Britain. Other European
countries have experienced even more dra-
matic shifts (see Figure 1 for more detailed
data), while the US Census Bureau recently
reported that average household size in the
United States declined from 2.63 to 2.59
between 1990 and 2000, in line with ‘the
downward trends in these indicators since
the end of the Baby Boom in the 1960s’
(USCB, 2001: 2). Despite the fact that ‘the
majority of households in the United States in
2000 were maintained by married couples,
27.2 million households consisted of people
living alone. This represented a 4.6 million
increase in one-person households since
1990’ (p. 6). In spite of the methodological
limitations associated with such a vast data-
gathering effort, Bongaarts’ (2001) compre-
hensive review of household change has
shown a constant downward trend in
average household size in the developed
world between 1850 and 2000 (Figure 2).
Sociologists, anthropologists and popula-
tion geographers alike have offered theoreti-
cal explanations of the rapid decrease in
average household size experienced by most
developed-world countries. Living on one’s
own has been connected to an array of inter-
twined socio-economic and cultural trends,
Stefan Buzar et al. 417
revolving around the increased individualiza-
tion and atomization of society (Verdon,
1998; Kuijsten, 1999). The connection
between social status and one-person house-
holds is evident in the national statistics of
France and England and Wales, where living
alone has ‘become a much more significant
phenomenon over the last decade, and the
growth is particularly pronounced among
young adults’ (Hall et al., 1997: 178). Wall’s
(1989) exhaustive historical analysis of this
process has led him to the conclusion that the
trend towards increasing rates of one-person
households is ‘unmistakable’, although ‘for all
the emphasis on change, there are a number
of continuities with the family patterns of the
past’ (p. 373). This is evidenced by the stabil-
ity of ‘the rank order of European countries in
terms of the proportions of one-person
households’, because ‘in 1960, the leading
group comprised Austria, Finland, West
Germany, France, Sweden and Denmark,
and the same countries occupied six of the
top eight positions in 1980’ (p. 376).
One of the most striking components of
recent demographic developments has been
the increased complexity of transitions
between different household structures. Not
only do individuals now move through a wider
spectrum of social relations and networks
through their life course, but there has also
been a steady rise in the frequency and inten-
sity with which people enter different house-
hold situations (Gober, 1990; Elder, 1994).
Kuijsten (1996) attributes such trends to the
fact that ‘individual family groups are decreas-
ing in size and becoming more unstable, with
a shorter life span, and people are members of
such groups for a smaller percentage of their
life course’, while ‘familism as a cultural value
is weakening in favour of such values as self-
fulfilment and egalitarianism’ (Kuijsten, 1996:
140; see also Popenoe, 1988: 8).
The new demographies of household tran-
sitions have been accompanied by a rich
methodological literature, aimed at developing
theoretical frameworks for modelling house-
hold formation and dissolution (Courgeau and
418 Households matter

Figure 1 Percentage share of one-person households in selected countries, 1970–2000

Sources: European Labour Force Survey; Eurostat, Martin and Kats, 2003; Federal
Statistical Office, Germany; National Statistics UK; Hall et al., 1997

Lelièvre, 1992; Burch, 1995; Keilman et al.,
1988). Starting from ‘the notion that a large
variety of demographic behaviours can be
interpreted with reference to a household
status decision’, Burch and Matthews (1987:
496) suggest several explanatory hypotheses
for the ‘pervasive trend towards separate
living and smaller households’ (see p. 502). In
conjunction with developments in related
fields, these theoretical strands have formed
the basis of the life-course approach, which
summarizes life histories in terms of

Figure 2 Trends in average household size in selected European and North
American countries, between c. 1850 and 2000
Source: Bongaarts, 2001: 264
demographic ‘events’ and ‘stages’, such as
relationships, employment and childbearing
(Kendig, 1995: 137; see also Holmans et al.,
1987). Dykstra and van Wissen (1999)
emphasize the interdisciplinarity of this analyt-
ical perspective, which ‘brings together
demographic, psychological, sociological,
anthropological and historical traditions’ (p. 7).
The life-course approach has also opened the
space for undertaking cross-sectional investi-
gations of social and demographic structures
in past societies (see Neven, 2002; Ruggles,
2003).
The second demographic transition has
also led to the pluralization of household
arrangements, as the recent decades have
seen the emergence of ‘dual-career house-
holds’ and ‘step-families’, among other fluid
Stefan Buzar et al. 419
arrangements (Caces et al., 1985; Bornat et
al., 1999). Subsequently, it has come into
question whether the current assortment of
formal definitions can capture complexities
on the ground. One-person households are
particularly problematic for census-takers in
developed countries, as they may incorporate
a partially cohabiting ‘living apart together’
couple, whose members pursue dual careers
(Kaufmann, 1993; 1994; Fagnani, 1993; Green,
1995; 1997; Green et al., 1999; Hardhill, 2002).
It is worth noting that such changes have
unfolded against the background of the
broader ‘post-Fordist’ flexibilization of econ-
omy and employment (Amin, 1994; Graham
and Spence, 1995; Peck, 2001), as well as the
accentuation of individualism and ‘otherness’
in postmodernity (for instance, see Huyssens,
420 Households matter
1984; Harvey, 1990). At the same time, some
demographers have been pointing out that
changes in fertility, family and household
patterns are connected to ‘the refusal of insti-
tutional morality’ as well as ‘the accentuation
of freedom of choice, the replacement of
conformism by responsibility, and the greater
tolerance for the choices and lifestyles of
others’ (Lesthaeghe and Moors, 1995: 4).
With its far-reaching theoretical and prac-
tical ramifications, the second demographic
transition has turned the traditional concep-
tualization of the family on its head. The
‘unpacking’ of kinship and residential relations
has distended and blurred household bound-
aries, creating complex layers of hybrid
structures that are in a constant state of flux.
III Changing patterns of kinship,
friendship and everyday life
The unravelling of traditional family and
household structures has led to fundamental
changes in the manner in which individuals
relate to each other in their everyday lives.
Sociologists have been quick to respond to
these dynamics. Silva and Smart (1999)
emphasize that ‘a major change in the concept
of family is that it has come to signify the sub-
jective meaning of intimate connections rather
than formal, objective blood or marriage ties.
This subjective appreciation brings together
people who live in separate households for
part of the time, or all the time ... or people
who simply choose to belong together as a
family’ (p. 7). Therefore, ‘the identification of
‘friends’ as ‘family’ is not seen as a pathology
but as a reflection of how the subjective
meaning of family is changing and how individ-
uals may be shifting their locus of intimacy and
support away from other people’ (p. 9).
The social importance of loose friendship
networks was first emphasized more than 30
years ago by Granovetter (1973), who
remarks that ‘weak ties, often denounced as
generative of alienation ... are ... indispensa-
ble to individuals’ opportunities and to their
integration into communities; strong ties,
breeding local cohesion, lead to overall
fragmentation’ (p. 1378). Bowling alone,
Putnam’s (2000) seminal work about civic
engagement and social capital in twentieth-
century America, notes a similar trend: ‘as
mobility, divorce, and smaller families have
reduced the relative importance of kinship
ties, especially among the more educated,
friendship may actually have gained impor-
tance in the modern metropolis’ (p. 96). Such
trends are the most pronounced in the case of
young one-person households, whose social
networks have ‘redefined friendship, family,
and commitment’, creating new urban social,
economic and cultural landscapes in the
process (Watters, 2003; 2004). This is exem-
plified by the results of a recent survey in
west Germany, which showed that ‘people
under 55 who live alone have social networks
nearly similar in size, density and frequency of
contact to their counterparts who live in
multiple-person households ... unlike the older
group, younger people have more opportuni-
ties to generate and maintain their social
networks, even when they live alone’ (Bien
et al., 1992: 172).
The changing dispositions of kinship and
friendship networks have also affected the
upbringing and everyday lives of children. In
March 2002, more than 30% of American
children were living outside two-parent fami-
lies (USCB, 2003), while nearly a quarter of
that figure (about 5.5 million children, or 7%
of all children) were living in homes with a
grandparent (USCB, 2001). The UK has more
than 1.6 million single-parent families, 90% of
which are headed by women (Haskey, 1998).
In most developed countries, the share of
births among unmarried women has risen
dramatically during the last 20 years (see
Table 1). However, these figures may hide a
more complex picture. Bradshaw et al.’s
(1999) survey of nonresident fathers in Britain
found that ‘the great majority of the fathers
are maintaining relationships with their chil-
dren, albeit with considerable difficulty ... the
Child Support Act was bound to fail because
it did not understand or seek to understand
the complex dynamics in the relationships
 Stefan Buzar et al. 421

Table 1 Births to unmarried women as a percentage of all

live births, 11 countries, selected years, 1980–2000
Country 1980 1990 1995 2000
United States 18.4 28.0 32.2 33.2
Canada 12.8 24.4 27.6 28.3
Japan 0.8 1.1 1.2 1.6
Denmark 33.2 46.6 46.5 44.6
France 11.4 30.1 37.6 42.6
Ireland 5.0 14.6 22.3 31.8
Italy 4.3 6.5 8.1 9.6
Netherlands 4.1 11.4 15.5 24.9
Spain 3.9 9.6 11.1 17.0
Sweden 39.7 47.0 53.0 55.3
United Kingdom 11.5 27.5 33.6 33.9

Source: Martin and Kats, 2003: 11.

between a sense of obligation and the emo-
tional bond between the father, his child, and
his former partner’ (Bradshaw et al., 1999:
425).
This emphasis on the normative aspects of
child-rearing reflects a growing orientation
within contemporary sociological studies of
family life. Brannen (1999) points out that the
‘new interest in childhood has emphasized
children’s agency in the outside world, as well
as inside families and other adult-dominated
institutions. In reaction to the deterministic
concept of socialization ... sociologists have
sought to uncouple children from the nuclear
family and to re-frame them conceptually
both as subjects of research and as subjects
who construct their own consciousness and
life trajectories’ (Brannen, 1999: 143). A
similar trend is emerging within human
geography, as exemplified by, for instance,
Valentine’s (1996; 1997) work on the produc-
tion of children’s lived space. In her opinion,
‘perhaps by breaking away from thinking of
children as incompetent, pre-social, less
knowledgeable, less able and so on, geography
can begin to move on from adding children to
the margins of the discipline towards recog-
nizing younger people as participants/
contributors in the everyday world and to
highlight their part in all our geographies’
(Valentine, 1997: 83). Similarly, Matthews et
al.’s (1998) study of the ‘microgeographies of
teenagers’ emphasizes the need for an
approach which ‘places considerable empha-
sis on the role of ‘agency’ and the way in
which young people influence and form their
own culture within small groups’ (p. 201).
Many theorizations of intrafamily social
life are based on the broader belief that every-
day life both arises out of, and is implicated in,
the social production of space (de Certeau,
1984; Lefebvre, 1991; Beck, 1992). This para-
digm is deeply interwoven in Holloway and
Hubbard’s (2001) comprehensive examina-
tion of the ‘extraordinary geographies of
everyday life’. They highlight the multilay-
ered relationships between everyday life,
culture and identity, through a variety of
empirical examples, such as the imagination of
‘home’, and the daily use of retail spaces and
the internet. Studies such as this have created
a bridge between the sociospatial aspects of
everyday life, on the one hand, and the
distinct body of work on the geographies of
domesticity, on the other. Hence, reading the
domestic ‘as a site where massive negotia-
tions between often competing ideological
pressures are undertaken’ (George, 1998: 16)
has opened pathways for understanding the
social construction of gender, time, space,
422 Households matter
economy and culture at the household scale
(for instance, see Blunt, 1999; Pine, 2002). As
a result of this work, it has become recog-
nized that the home has taken ‘an additional
meaning over and above its use as a shelter’
(Randolph, 1991: 38).
In summary, then, it can be concluded that
the societal effects of the second demo-
graphic transition extend far beyond the
conventional domain of population trends. The
destabilization of traditional family structures
can be connected to a much wider range of
social processes, including the emergence of
new networks of kinship and friendship, the
microgeographies of children and teenagers,
and the changing meanings of everyday life
and domesticity. Although all of these dynam-
ics are not necessarily a direct outcome of the
second demographic transition, they never-
theless highlight the deep connections
between household demography, on the one
hand, and the social, spatial and cultural
aspects of everyday life, on the other.
IV Economic and feminist geographies
of the household
When discussing the cumulative economic
effects of household change, it is important to
emphasize the growing mismatch between
household and population numbers in the
developed world. While population growth
rates have been falling in nearly all postindus-
trial countries, the total number of house-
holds has been increasing equally fast, if not
faster (van Imhoff et al., 1995; Ogden and
Hall, 2004). Similar trends are beginning to
emerge in the developing world, although it is
difficult to formulate an overarching typology,
due to the dependence of demography on
local conditions (Wallerstein and Smith, 1992;
Bongaarts, 2001).
Recent studies of the widening gap
between household and population rates have
demonstrated that even the simplest consider-
ations of household numbers can provide a
startling corrective to standard analyses of
population change. Thus, Sinclair (1991) noted
for the United States the dramatic decline in
the 1970s and 1980s of household size, accom-
panied by a rise in household numbers. Europe
has experienced a similar process, discussed by
Kuijsten (1995), Rees (1997) and Reher (1998),
among others. Spencer’s (1997) investigation
of rural England detected a widening gap
between population change and the growth in
household numbers, where in the same popu-
lation the former may be strongly negative
while the latter is strongly positive.
Fertility transitions are crucial to deter-
mining whether and when a divergence
between household and population growth
may occur. This is because changes in fertility
can influence the sizes of different age
cohorts, as exemplified by the cohort effects
of the ‘baby boom’ generations coming to
adulthood (see Macunovich, 2002). Although
Caldwell (1997) observes that a unifying the-
orization of the ‘global fertility transition’ is
still lacking, the postwar period has heralded a
rich literature on the sociocultural contingen-
cies of fertility, in developed and developing
countries alike (Lesthaeghe and Surkyn,
1988; Beets et al., 1994; Bongaarts and
Watkins, 1996; van da Kaa, 1996; 2001; Paul,
1997; Chant, 1997; Guzman et al., 1997).
Some of the more recent contributions to
this field underline that although ‘the future
course of fertility in countries where it is
already at or below replacement is one of the
most hotly debated topics in contemporary
demography ... it seems unlikely that fertility
will climb back to the replacement level’
(Bongaarts, 2002: 439). Having noted the
‘extremely intense process of fertility and
mortality decline under way nearly every-
where in the world’, Reher (2004) empha-
sizes the need for a global theorization of the
demographic transition. Similarly, Boyle
(2003) makes the case for a geography of
fertility, by emphasizing that ‘spatial varia-
tions (or the lack of them) can be a useful test
of the comprehensiveness of grand theories
of population change and it would be a
shame if population geographers did not take
up the challenge to investigate these theories
a little more enthusiastically’ (p. 622).

In her historical analysis of postindustrial
urban and economic change, Sassen (1991)
underlines that ‘the household is the key unit
of consumption, and in an economy based on
final consumption, this mattered immensely’
(p. 333). Hence, the growing number of small
households, together with the growing
number of households per se, has led to
fundamental transformations in the structure
of consumption and policy practices at the
macroeconomic level. The extent of such
changes is illustrated by recent developments
in the provision of residential utility services
(Illeris, 1991; Leyshon and Thrift, 1995), as
well as the nature of social protection and
care (Wacquant, 1999; Pierson, 1999; Nyberg,
2000). Economic demography has provided a
host of methodological tools for modelling
these processes, in addition to focusing on
issues such as intergenerational and inter-
household economic links and distribution
(Kotlikoff, 1988; Bergstrom, 1989; Solon,
1992; Rosenzweig and Stark, 1997); the
economics of fertility, marriage and divorce
(Bryant, 1990; Cigno, 1991; Ahn, 1995;
Flowerdew et al., 1999), and the economic
impacts of migration (Gunatilleke, 1992;
Halfacree, 1995; Bailey and Cooke, 1998).
At the same time, however, ‘economic
geography has been shaken by the winds of
economic upheaval, by the challenges made
to political-economic analysis and by the
“post-modern” flavour of much contempo-
rary theorization, prompting many to chart a
new course for future research and enquiry’
(Wills and Lee, 1997: xv). Studies of
microlevel processes have been a crucial com-
ponent of this conceptual shift, as evidenced
by the burgeoning literature on the multiple
orderings of culture and economy within
the household scale (Anderson et al., 1994;
Callon, 1999; Wallace and Cousins, 2001;
Wallace, 2002). For instance, Miller (2003)
uses ethnographic evidence from several
British households to ‘redirect attention from
shopping as an expression of individual
subjectivity and identity to an expression of
kinship and other relationships’ (p. 264).
Stefan Buzar et al. 423
Following his field investigation of the rela-
tions of household food production and recip-
rocal exchange in Slovakia, Smith (2002) has
concluded ‘that our understandings of “econ-
omy” need to consider both the diversity of
practices and class processes, but also the
non-reducibility of such practices to narrowly
economistic readings or overly culturalist
explanations’ (p. 247).
The growing importance of household
economies has highlighted the role of gender
in the social production of inequality, econ-
omy and space. Feminist political economists
have taken the lead in this respect, as much of
their work has been aimed at unpacking the
interactions of power, class and identity
that emanate from the household domain.
For instance, Gibson-Graham’s (1996) work
shows how ‘emerging feminist discourses of
the noncapitalist household economy can be
seen as potentially destabilizing to capitalism’s
hegemony’ (p. 12). Having noted contribu-
tions by Folbre (1993) and Fraad et al. (1994),
among others, she emphasizes that recent
feminist studies of the household economy
have been able to ‘represent the household in
so-called advanced capitalist societies as a
major locus of production and make the case
that, in terms of both the value of output and
the numbers of people involved, the house-
hold sector can hardly be called marginal’
(p. 261). Therefore ‘if we can grant that non-
market transactions (both within and outside
the household) account for a substantial por-
tion of transactions and that therefore what
we have blithely called a capitalist economy in
the United States is certainly not wholly or
even predominantly a market economy, per-
haps we can also look within and behind the
market to see the differences concealed
there’ (p. 261). The relationship between
household-level inequalities, gender and
economic restructuring comes to the fore in
McDowell’s examination of ‘the new gender
order of post-fordism’, where she finds that
‘in the present era, it seems as if the interests
of working-class men and women are drawing
closer together as both sexes are adversely
424 Households matter
affected by the reconstruction of large areas
of work as “feminine”’ (McDowell, 1991:
416).
In addition to unravelling the underlying
power relations of capitalism, feminist eco-
nomic research has also made an important
contribution to the theorization of marginality
and inequality at different scales. While
discussing the role of the household in struc-
turing women’s employment, Smith (1997)
stresses that ‘policies aimed at combating
unemployment and the effects of social
exclusion should be similarly orientated
towards the household as well as the individ-
ual’ (p. 1173). Iversen (2003) takes this
argument a step further, by suggesting that
intrahousehold inequality, ‘which is common
in developing countries and often distinctly
gendered’ (p. 110) presents a challenge for
Sen’s (1985; 1993) capabilities approach. Sen
argued that the possession of a commodity or
utility cannot provide proxies for well-being,
but rather it is important what a given individ-
ual actually succeeds in doing with the com-
modity, given their personal characteristics
and external circumstances (see Sen, 1985;
1993).
Many feminist authors have addressed the
increasing inability of economic policy to
respond to contemporary socio-economic
and demographic trends. Folbre (2001) advo-
cates an adequate valuation of the ‘invisible
heart of care’, which has helped drive the
‘invisible hand of the market’. She empha-
sizes that ‘our economic and legal system has
not kept pace with changes in the types of
caring relationships that individuals form’,
because ‘marriage is the primary form of non-
biological kinship that we recognize, yet
marriage is, for many adults, a relatively short-
term relationship’ (p. 228). These conclusions
build on her earlier work on the political econ-
omy of family policy, where she found that
‘efforts to distribute the costs of social repro-
duction more equally between male and
female kin will not be sufficient, especially as
more and more individuals live outside biolog-
ical kin networks’ (Folbre, 1993: 254).
Even though feminist theorists have
devoted significant attention to the research
of intra- and interhousehold inequality, analo-
gous studies of the life course have gained
prominence only in the last decade, because
‘with few exceptions, feminist geographers
have emphasized the behaviour, concerns and
perceptions of women who are implicitly in
the younger and middle years of adulthood ...
they have paid almost no attention to the
years of childhood and adolescence, and only
a little more to the lives of older women’
(Monk and Katz, 1993: 17). This is despite the
fact that understanding how ‘international,
state and corporate policy ricochet around
women’s everyday lives’ (Katz and Monk,
1993: 277) is crucial to the ‘reconciliation of
employment policy with family life’ (Hantrais,
2000). Indeed, recent insights into the work-
lifestyle choices of women have emphasized
that female labour force participation is
dependent on the nature of patriarchal
relationships within the home (Delphy and
Leonard, 1992; Hakim, 2000). In particular, a
growing body of evidence suggests that the
negotiation of gender roles in the household
(Chapman, 1999; Nyberg, 2000) can affect
the flexibilization of family and employment
patterns in the macroeconomy.
V The household as an urban agent
In their entirety, the demographic, cultural
and economic outcomes of household-level
dynamics constitute a powerful force of
urban transformation. This is because cities
simultaneously shape, and are shaped by, the
consumption practices and mobility patterns
of their constituent households. The manner
in which households mould urban space,
however, hinges on a plethora of deeper
sociocultural dynamics, which are nested
within the broader processes described in the
previous parts of this paper. The urban
agency of the household thus embodies the
joint spatial outcomes of the myriad social
changes that have been unfolding during the
past few decades, including the second demo-
graphic transition, the new positionality of

gender and family structures, noncapitalist
economic activity, and post-Fordist restruc-
turing.
The household’s position at the contact
point of such a wide range of social dynamics
implies that its urban implications can be
approached through a variety of angles.
While some authors have engaged directly
with the causes and consequences of
sociospatial segregation, others have sought
to investigate the underlying conceptual rela-
tionships between urban planning practices
and household structures. In their path-
breaking investigation of the way in which
networked infrastructures are ‘splintering’
urban form and function, Graham and Marvin
(2001) also discuss the history of infrastruc-
tural integration in the household domain.
Having noted Wajcman (1991) and Cowan’s
(1997) work on the gendering of domestic
technologies, they conclude that ‘the net-
works laid out to service the new networked
households of the increasingly polycentric
city – electricity, gas, streets, water and the
telephone – were also constructed in gen-
dered ways to reinforce this patriarchal
stereotyping in the partitioning of bodies in
urban space’ (Graham and Marvin, 2001: 125).
Therefore, urban infrastructures have played
a key role in creating ‘the privatized and indi-
vidualized household’ (p. 127), although
domestic technologies ‘did not reduce the
necessity for time-consuming labour’ (p. 126).
This echoes Kirsch’s (1995) conclusion that
‘households have been remade, both materi-
ally and conceptually, to accommodate
changing social and technological formations’
(p.541).
However, the rigid spatial disposition of
infrastructural systems in the built environ-
ment can clash with the fluid everyday lives of
urban households, which have diverse hous-
ing, transport and consumption needs. There
have been a number of contributions about
the manner in which poverty and social exclu-
sion emerge from inadequate policy under-
standings of the interactions between
demography and economy at the household
Stefan Buzar et al. 425
scale. This is a central theme in Jarvis et al.’s
(2001) evidence-based study of job-related
mobility in three British urban contexts. Their
conceptual framework revolves around the
‘secret life of cities’, which can be defined as
‘the banal and the everyday. It is dropping into
the shop on the way home from work; it is
dropping children off at school; it is living in
the best place to suit multi-earner, and multi-
activity, households. It is, in sum, how we
organize our everyday lives’ (p. 25). The
‘secret life of cities’ reveals a complex frag-
mentation of daily mobility within contempo-
rary households, implying that the planners’
bias towards individual levels of activity may
have created a sociospatial mismatch between
urban layouts and travel patterns. Similarly,
Kwan’s (1999) quantitative analysis of the
accessibility of urban opportunities (i.e., jobs
and amenities) in Franklin County, Ohio, has
led her to conclude that ‘individual access to
urban opportunities for women ... is signifi-
cantly less than that of men’ (p. 222) although
there is no difference in her model, in terms of
types of areas they can reach.
The intertwining of everyday life, mobility
and social inequality within the household scale
has received detailed attention in Bondi and
Christie’s (2000) study of two different groups
of home-owners in Swindon and Edinburgh.
Their evidence points ‘towards distinct spatial-
ities of everyday lives: middle-class gentrifiers
enjoy highly mobile lifestyles, while the lives of
indebted home-owners are geographically very
circumscribed ... the very different spatialities
of everyday life evident in these two groups
operate via their awareness of, and feelings
about, mobility as well as via their actual move-
ments across space’ (p. 240). Therefore, it can
be argued that ‘the contrasting spatialities of
everyday lives is a key means by which the
restratification associated with post-Fordism
operates’ (Bondi and Christie, 2000: 340). This
conclusion reflects the findings of the broader
literature on the economic, demographic and
housing constraints faced by low-income and
lone-parent households (Casey and McRae,
1990; Glendinning, 1991; McLaughlin, 1994).
426 Households matter
These literatures have been developing
alongside the distinct line of work on the
sociospatial implications of urban residential
segregation. The concentration of a homoge-
nous set of household structures in a
restricted territorial setting is crucial to the
emergence of territorial differences in the
consumption of services and goods, and
the production of urban space in different
parts of the city. One of the most visible
consequences of such discrepancies is the
‘partitioned city’ (Marcuse and van Kempen,
2002) which is associated with ‘increased
segregation, shrinkage of public amenities,
commercialization of civic life, decline of
central cities, and social polarization’ (p. 3;
but see also Hall and Ogden, 1992; Richter
et al., 1997; Skeldon, 1997; Power and
Mumford, 1999).
The concentration of single and/or cohab-
iting young professionals in the urban cores of
postindustrial cities (Jobse and Musterd,
1993; Ogden and Hall, 2004) exemplifies the
effects of migration on the spatial ‘sorting’ of
household types (see also Mincer, 1978; Frey
and Kobrin, 1982; Ermisch, 1991; Settles et al.,
1993; Glaser and Grundy, 1998; Parr et al.,
2000). One of the consequences of the spatial
clustering of such household structures – with
their specific consumption practices and
social networks – in particular types of urban
spaces is the emergence of a social formation
that Watters (2004) has coined under the
heading ‘urban tribes’. Although he admits
the inherent difficulties in developing an all-
encompassing definition of these structures,
Watters often describes them as ‘tight-knit’
groups of friends who provide each other with
a social support network for bridging the
period between university education and
married life. The ‘urban tribes’ are associated
with a specific array of housing, mobility
and consumption patterns.
On the other hand, suburban spaces have
become the arena for an entirely different set
of social processes. Fishman (1990), Garreau
(1991) and Lang (2004), among others, have
provided comprehensive reviews of the
origins and implications of sprawling office
and residential developments at the outskirts
of North American cities. This body of work
has opened the path for connecting the evolu-
tion of urban functions and forms with the
sociospatial agency of household structures.
VI Populating cities with households
As noted earlier in this paper, the multifac-
eted implications of intra- and interhousehold
dynamics point to the need for an increased
emphasis on household demography within
contemporary interpretations of urban spatial
processes. However, part of the existing liter-
ature already possesses an acute awareness
of these relationships. Urban geography in
particular has developed a range of analytical
tools for examining the spatial effects of
household-level practices and decisions.
Randolph (1991) argues that households can
provide the ‘missing link’ between housing
and labour markets, considering that ‘the size
and composition of a household affects its
housing consumption in terms of the physical
aspects of housing demand’ (p. 38). This is
one of the main reasons why individuals with
similar labour or occupational features often
find themselves in drastically different hous-
ing circumstances. Moreover, housing choices
are contingent on a number of household
economic features, such as the number of
wage earners, employment patterns and
income levels (Randolph, 1991). However, the
cultural aspects of housing consumption are
of no less importance in this respect, as exem-
plified, for instance, by Agnew’s (1981)
insights into the role of housing as a status
object, and the role of the domestic as an
arena for affective expression.
Housing demographers have also devoted
significant attention to the residential ramifi-
cations of household demographic change. In
one of the seminal contributions to the field,
Kendig (1995) combines the life-course
approach with a demand-orientated analysis
of the housing stock, concluding that ‘many
inequalities in housing policies can arise
between the minority of people who probably

will never buy and the majority who do
become owners’ (p. 152). While recognizing
the importance of the adjacent literatures on
the life course of households and dwellings
(Lansing et al., 1969; Richards et al., 1987),
Kendig underlines that ‘many important
issues remain unexplored in the diverse
pathways taken by individuals through the
changing stock of housing’ (1995: 152). These
include ‘the explanations and consequences
of major moves upward, downward and
sideways in housing careers; subtle issues of
timing and trade-offs; and active strategies
taken by individuals to pursue their chosen
housing path’ (1995: 152).
Beauregard’s (2003) account of postwar
‘voices of decline’ in American cities finds
that, during the 1950s, ‘the increased number
of households in the central cities (even as
overall population declined) helped to main-
tain demand at or above earlier levels. Slums
expanded as low-income black households
were channelled into segregated neighbour-
hoods by real estate agents and discrimina-
tory lending practices’ (p. 113). Similarly,
Sinclair (1991) observes for Detroit that
declining household size does not imply a
decline in the size of the dwelling desired.
Many cities cannot cope with the need for
additional housing, and as a result ‘the growth
takes place elsewhere. In essence the reper-
cussions of household change are “trans-
ferred” to other areas, causing a spatial
reshuffling of the urban system’ (p. 69).
Together with the human geography research
discussed above, these types of findings have
made an important contribution to the
theorization, formulation and implementation
of housing policies (see also Moore and
Clark, 1990; Randolph, 1991; Michalovic,
1992; Bailey and Robertson, 1997; Jarvis,
1999; Seo, 2002).
The gentrification literature has also
focused on the relationship between house-
hold change and urban space, as evidenced by
Markusen’s (1981: 32) argument that ‘gentrifi-
cation is in large part a result of the
breakdown of the patriarchal household’. In a
Stefan Buzar et al. 427
geographical contribution that bears some
similarity to the life-course approach in
demography, Bondi (1999) investigates how
everyday lives are implicated in the inter-
weaving of class, gender and gentrification,
through a detailed study of three different
urban districts in Edinburgh. She cites a num-
ber of examples where gentrification has been
associated with a wider range of socio-
demographic strata, extending beyond the
professional middle class. The ability of
household-level events to influence the
broader dynamic of gentrification is also
discussed by Redfern (1997), who emphasizes
the role of domestic technologies in this
process. His argument is framed within a
broader attempt to break the ‘theoretical
logjam’ between the dichotomy of supply- and
demand-side explanations of gentrification.
It is also becoming increasingly recognized
that specific sociocultural configurations, such
as those found in nonheterosexual living
arrangements, can play a key role in trans-
forming the urban demographic landscape
(Lauria and Knopp, 1985; Caulfield, 1989; Bell
and Valentine, 1995; Valentine, 1995; Weeks
et al., 1999). As emphasized by Knopp (1995)
‘in a world, then, in which spatiality and
sexuality are fundamental experiences, and in
which sexuality, race, class and gender have
been constructed as significant axes of differ-
ence, it should come as no surprise that strug-
gles organized around these differences
feature prominently in a process like urbaniza-
tion’ (p. 159). Lees (2000) underlines that
‘whatever the precise relationships between
gender, sexuality and the process of gentrifi-
cation, there can be no mistaking the fact
they have featured high on the agenda of an
important segment of the academic research
community’ (p. 394). In this context, it is
worth noting Binnie’s (1997) warning that the
new cultural and feminist geographies may
also reproduce heterosexism, although they
are unlikely to match the levels reached by
antecedent positivist research practices.
Taken together, the long list of geo-
graphic, economic and feminist studies of the
428 Households matter
household has provided a solid basis for build-
ing a synthetic ‘geography’ of this scale. There
is now a substantial body of evidence linking
household-level events to broader social and
economic changes. However, the ‘second
demographic transition’ is still absent from
the mainstream of urban studies. The spatial
ramifications of demographic, cultural and
economic dynamics at the household scale
have been continuously underplayed in the
urban geography and gentrification litera-
tures, despite the relationship between
postindustrial urban change and the decen-
tring of traditional family structures (for
instance, see Markusen, 1981; Bondi, 1999).
In addition, there is a need for further empiri-
cal and theoretical investigation of the
manner in which lifecourses, kinship patterns
and gender roles produce urban space, while
shaping social exclusion and/or affluence in
different parts of the city.
The emerging geographies of ‘reurbaniza-
tion’ (see Lever, 1993; Ogden and Hall, 2000;
Seo 2002) provide a useful starting point for
addressing these conceptual deficiencies.
Although many developed countries experi-
enced an intense process of ‘counterurbaniza-
tion’ and population deconcentration during
the 1960s and 1970s (Champion, 1989;
Spencer, 1997), this trend has recently been
followed, or in some cases accompanied by, a
reverse shift – the re-emergence of the inner
city as ‘an extraordinary site of recovery and
renewal’ (Soja, 2001: 54). One of the most
important aspects of this process is its
extensive reliance on the agency of cultural
strategies, which Griffiths (1995) groups into
three categories: the ‘integrationist’, ‘cultural
industries’ and ‘promotional’ models (p. 254;
see also Deben et al. 1992; Bianchini and
Parkinson, 1993). These refer, respectively, to
the increased provision of multiple-use
commercial and cultural facilities; the easy
accessibility of high-quality cultural events;
and the animation of community life and
interactions (see van den Berg et al., 1982;
Lever, 1993; Seo, 2002). As evidenced by
the situation in France, the ‘resurgence’ of
inner-city areas has also been accompanied by
population changes linked to the second
demographic transition, such as a rapid rise in
the propensity to live alone, and the increased
sociospatial influence of ethnic, gender and
sexual minorities (Ogden and Hall, 2000;
2004). Similar trends have been observed in
Britain and other developed countries
(Mullins, 1995; Haskey, 1996). The growing
feminization of the workforce, though not
undisputed (Lyons, 1998) has also been asso-
ciated with these demographic and territorial
changes (Bondi, 1991).
Cross-referencing these findings leads to
the conclusion that household-level demo-
graphic change lies at the nexus of the
cultural, the economic and the urban. The
migratory and economic processes spawned
by the second demographic transition have
been supplemented by a complex bundle of
economic and spatial decisions at the house-
hold scale. The presence of such connections
has already been established in the literature,
as indicated by Frey and Kobrin’s (1982)
emphasis of the interdependence between
inner-city regeneration and the ‘rise of the pri-
mary individual’, as well as Bessy-Pietri’s
(2000) suggestion that second-generation
urban dwellers tend to prefer central city
living to suburban locations. The connection
between these postmodern demographic
changes, on the one hand, and the wider
transformations of the built environment, on
the other, corroborates the claim about the
urban agency of the household.
VII Conclusion
In this paper, we have emphasized the
analytical potential of the household in human
geography, through a comparative analysis of
demographic, sociological, economic, femi-
nist and geographic perspectives on the social
anatomy of this scale. Despite opening many
pathways for understanding the social
construction of economy, culture and gender,
however, the reviewed literatures have paid
insufficient attention to the relationships
between household change and broader

urban dynamics per se. In particular, the role
of population trends has been relatively
marginalized in the study of urban change,
although a number of contributions (espe-
cially Markusen, 1981; Lauria and Knopp,
1985; Ley, 1996; Myers, 1999; Bondi, 1999;
Redfern, 1997) have provided insights into the
urban implications of household geometries.
The sociocultural transformations brought
about by the second demographic transition
are key to understanding changes in popula-
tion processes such as migration, fertility,
cohabitation, marriage and divorce rates,
employment patterns, and household size and
composition. Recent shifts in the course of
these dynamics have destabilized earlier
notions of family, kinship and residence.
Relationships between individuals are
organized along both horizontal and vertical
ties of kin and friendship, adding a new layer
of fuzziness to the already ambiguous con-
ceptual boundaries of the household
(Kiernan, 1986; King et al., 2000). However,
the apparent ‘unravelling’ of this scale has not
decreased its agency as a key driver of
sociospatial change. There is an inherent
contradiction between the conceptual desta-
bilization of the household, on the one hand,
and its increased ability to mould space and
place, on the other. It is possible that this
paradox creates an instability and tension
which urban change stimulates.
The post-Fordist ‘flexibilization’ of employ-
ment patterns, alongside the simultaneous
‘deinstitutionalization’ of the family, has led to
a fundamental shift in the relationships
between gender, economy and work. The
household is being affirmed as an important
site of nonmarket production (Fraad et al.,
1994; Gibson-Graham, 1996; Vaiou, 1997)
which can be used to challenge the hege-
mony of neoliberal capitalism. At the same
time, there is a continuous need for informing
legal regulations and conceptual frameworks
with the changing economic nature of gender
roles in the family (Folbre, 1993), and the
growing discrepancy between household and
population numbers (van Imhoff et al., 1995).
Stefan Buzar et al. 429
The household scale thus operates as a
vibrant nexus for wider developments in the
economic, cultural, demographic and spatial
realm. The urban agency of the household is
embodied in the myriad connections between
the socio-economic changes brought about
by the sum of these interactions, on the one
hand, and the wider transformations of the
built environment, on the other. Therefore, a
greater analytical emphasis on the hitherto
‘quiet’ demography of urban transformation
can open the path for ‘rethinking gentrifica-
tion beyond the positions of economics or
culture’ (Lees, 1994) and energizing urban
geography with the multiple social transfor-
mations projecting from this scale.
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