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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR MONU #39 - SINGLES URBANISM


Patrick Bateman (American Psycho); Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and the City);
Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver); Fleabag; Thomas Magnum (Magnum, P.I.);
Sinterklaas; Batman; Theodore Twombly (Her); Automat (Edward Hopper);
Zaha Hadid; Mary Poppins; Bridget Jones; L. B. “Jeff” Jefferies (Rear Window);
Coco Chanel; The Scream (Edvard Munch); Amélie Poulain; WALL-E;
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (Caspar David Friedrich); Yayoi Kusama; Whoopi Goldberg

When I recently found myself flooded, during the ever-expanding shopping frenzy of the so-called Black Friday season, with offers branded as Singles' Day deals, it struck me: singles have become a remarkably powerful force in our societies. The prominence and intensity of Singles' Day—a celebration that began among students at a Chinese university in the early 1990s and has since grown into one of the largest global shopping festivals—underscores that singles are no longer just a demographic statistic, but a transformative presence reshaping cities and economies worldwide. That is why we aim to investigate, with this new issue of MONU entitled "Singles Urbanism", how singles transform cities and to understand the spatial consequences of life lived alone, and the growing prevalence of living outside the traditional structures of coupledom and family, and its urban influence.

In recent decades, cities around the world have witnessed a profound demographic shift: the rapid rise of single-person households and a growing number of individuals who live, work, move, consume and socialise primarily on their own. Today, in many metropolitan regions—from Stockholm to Seoul, from New York to Nairobi—singles make up one of the most influential and fastest-expanding urban groups. This development is not merely a matter of changing household figures; it is reshaping the very fabric of contemporary urbanism. Across much of the rich world, singlehood is becoming ever more widespread. In the United States, for example, the share of adults living without a spouse or partner has risen sharply over recent decades, mirroring a broader global pattern in which increasing numbers of people of all ages live alone or outside long-term relationships. Since 2010, the proportion of people living alone has increased in 26 out of 30 high-income countries. Today, around 40% of the approximately 8 million private households in the Netherlands are single-person units.

One reason why such a relationship recession is unfolding is that marriage rates are falling not only in Western countries but across much of Asia as well—including China and India, and perhaps most dramatically in South Korea and Taiwan. But the fact that more people today feel able to choose to be single—compared with a past shaped by much stronger social and economic pressures to marry, especially for women—should be seen as one of the major emancipations of the past half-century. Countless individuals have been freed from unhappy unions, and many women, in particular, now use their greater independence to be more selective when choosing a partner, and consequently more remain single. All of these changes are reshaping cities in multiple ways and impact, among others, aspects such as housing and domestic life, mobility and work, and leisure and public spaces through which singles live, move and engage with urban life.

When it comes to housing and domestic life, it becomes clear that the rise of singles as a major urban demographic is profoundly transforming the way we live and inhabit space. Housing markets, long structured around family units and couples, are being reshaped to accommodate smaller households and new forms of domestic arrangements. Micro-apartments, compact studios, flexible co-living units and communal living forms proliferate in response to both economic pressures and the desire for autonomy. How communal life might be an answer to present urban challenges that have appeared due to the increasing social fragmentation of our societies we demonstrated in MONU #18, arguing that such lifestyles do not necessarily need to come at the expense of individualism. However, many of these new ways of living are double-edged: while they offer independence, they often concentrate risk, reduce living space and externalise social life into commercial venues. Singles also challenge conventional ideas of domesticity, from the design of dwellings to the organisation of neighbourhoods and shared facilities. Ageing alone, safety and the need for support infrastructures further introduce new layers of complexity to housing design, demanding flexibility and resilience. Thus, with "Singles Urbanism" we want to explore new architectural typologies in particular, but also the social and spatial consequences of a growing population that lives outside traditional coupledom and family structures in general.

In relation to mobility and work, "Singles Urbanism" introduces new patterns that are reshaping the spatial and temporal dynamics of cities. Without the coordination demands of shared households, singles often move through urban space more flexibly and independently, and thus rely increasingly on public transport, cycling, shared mobility and walkable neighbourhoods. At the same time, they tend to be more geographically mobile overall—more willing to relocate for professional opportunities, educational paths or lifestyle changes, and more inclined to adopt hybrid or remote work models, which might require more decentralised spaces, a topic that we discussed intensively in MONU #26. The flexibility of singles might furthermore increase the demand for co-working spaces, adaptable offices and urban districts where working, dwelling and socialising can seamlessly coexist. Yet it also exposes certain vulnerabilities, from precarious employment conditions to greater risks of social isolation within highly individualised work patterns. Examining how singles navigate mobility and work as a result reveals emerging pressures and opportunities for designing cities that support autonomy while ensuring accessibility, building social connection and a sense of belonging through shared infrastructures, encounters and collective routines. It also highlights the need to strengthen stability and the everyday dynamics that bind the city together.

Leisure and public spaces are also being reshaped by the growing presence of singles, whose preferences and routines increasingly set the tempo of urban life. Singles often allocate a larger share of their income to experiences rather than durable goods, making them key patrons of restaurants, cultural venues, gyms, nightlife and a widening field of personal and recreational services. Their days and evenings follow more self-determined rhythms, creating an urban way of life less tied to family schedules and more open-ended and improvisational. In this sense, the single moves through the city like a solo dancer, following their own choreography while animating public spaces, filling cafés, cinemas and parks at moments when family households retreat indoors. These shifting patterns illustrate how singles are quietly reshaping both the rhythms and the spaces of city life, providing an opportunity to turn "Singles Urbanism" into a terrain of spontaneity, appropriation and experimentation, as we formulated in our latest issue, MONU #38. At the same time, the independence of singles brings new tensions: navigating leisure as a single often means engaging with spaces designed for consumption rather than connection, and finding meaningful encounters can require more effort in highly individualised urban settings. And as many singles turn to apps, online communities and even AI companions to mediate social engagement, there remains a great possibility that the impact of singles on leisure and public spaces may still be entirely different from what we anticipate.

Therefore, with this new issue of MONU on "Singles Urbanism", we aim to think beyond the stereotypes of the carefree single or the lonely urbanite in order to explore the ways singles experience and transform cities today. Urbanism is already responding, although unevenly. Some cities embrace the economic potential of singles as consumers, workers and cultural actors. Others treat singles as a problem to be solved—an indicator of declining fertility, weakened traditions or social atomisation. "Singles Urbanism" therefore also seeks geopolitical and cultural perspectives: How does singlehood manifest differently in East Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa? And how do singles of different ages—young adults, middle-aged professionals, and older city-dwellers—experience and shape urban life in distinct ways? What are the political narratives attached to being single, and how do they shape urban policy and spaces? What tensions arise between collective identities and increasingly individualised urban experiences? To understand what "Singles Urbanism" might mean today, we seek contributions that critically examine all these questions and aspects through reflective essays, bold research, fearless articles, speculative scenarios, data-based visualisations, illustrative photo series, mind-blowing artistic works, utopian architectural and urban design proposals, and other experimental formats. Abstracts of around 400 words, and images and illustrations in low resolution, should be sent, together with a short biography and a list of publications, as one single PDF file no larger than 1 MB to info@monu-magazine.com before 31 March 2026. MONU's issue #39 will be published in October 2026.

Bernd Upmeyer, December 2025