Housing as Care Infrastructure - Reframing Planning, Housing and Everyday Care

Housing constitutes the spatial and institutional foundation of care in cities. Everyday care, including childcare, elderly care, disability support and domestic labor, is primarily organized within and around the home. Housing location, design and its relationship to services and public space therefore play a decisive role in shaping how care is produced, who provides it, and at what cost. When housing is poorly located, overcrowded or disconnected from services, care responsibilities intensify and become more time-consuming, disproportionately affecting women and marginalized groups. Conversely, housing and planning policies that recognize care as a central urban function can reduce structural inequalities, support well-being and strengthen social cohesion. In this sense, adequate housing functions as a care infrastructure, shapes how care is organized, who has access to it, and the resources required to provide it. Care needs have traditionally been addressed through macro-level policies such as social housing programs, rent regulation, and housing benefits. This is where the urban planning perspective becomes essential. Housing design, location, and its integration with services and public space determine how care is produced, distributed, and accessed. Macro-level housing policies provide frameworks, but only by linking them with planning decisions at the local level housing can function effectively as a care infrastructure. Local and regional governments are particularly well-positioned to operationalize housing as care infrastructure. Having been the closest authorities to people, they understand local needs and social dynamics, have access to legal, planning, and budgetary tools, and can implement interventions that advance equity and inclusion while reducing structural inequalities. Analyzing housing through the mobility of care lenses will help to recognize, measure, value and properly account for all the travel associated with caring and home related tasks needed for the reproduction of life. This session will reveal how housing and urban planning decisions can actively strengthen urban care systems. It will explore how care can be made visible within housing policies and translated into concrete planning, design and governance choices. Building on a multi-stakeholder approach, the session will foster dialogue among representatives from international city networks, local governments, metropolitan areas, academia, and civil society.