ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the ways in which the (re)making of urban space through gentrification, the intensification of motherhood, the privatization of education, and the privatization of urban governance have served to make social reproduction more difficult, more masculinist, and less democratic. It focuses on the organization of urban space and its effects on the rising costs of parenting, the gentrification of schools, all aspects of urban life that are highly gendered and relies on longstanding masculinist assumptions about the gendered division of labor. The chapter argues that the work of social reproduction also allows the opportunity for alliances across gender, race, class, sexuality, and ability to reimagine who the city is for and how urban space should be organized. This privatization of schools, and indeed of urban policy itself, furthers the neoliberal agenda while accomplishing gentrification and displacement. Gentrification exacerbates the instability both in the housing market and in education policy.
