Childless cities present a new urban challenge across the world

In his 2016 book The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us, Joel Kotkin, a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University in California, mapped the phenomenon in the US. In San Francisco, he noted, there are 80,000 more dogs than children. The city has the highest number of households without children aged 18 or under of all core cities in the US. Kotkin also noted that the 2010 census found Chicago’s “overall population fell by seven percent, but its share of people aged five to 19 fell by 19 percent”. Similar trends can be found in other cities, including New York and Boston.