Background: Social support is considered to be a crucial health-enhancing facator for first-time parents. Becoming a parent is an interruption in lifestyle (life stressor) and in daily routines and practices when priority has to be given to a small child's needs. Furthermore, parents in western cities today are faced with new urbanized patterns of living, including fewer accessible social support networks, a "do-it-yourself" reality, a "reduced-place-dependency" and an inner-city life which is becoming increasingly commercialized. Parents, fathers as well as mothers, are in need of "settings" - as meeting places for both spontaneous and more planned get-togethers with friends. Aim: Explore which urban and digital social arenas first-time urban parents need and use and how they form, maintain, perceive and combine these arenas as a health-promoting settings. Focus will be on places/settings whre parents find social support and parental resources. Underlying theories: The theoretical frameworks developed by Aaron Antonovsky, Pierre Bourdieu, Alfred Schutz and Henri Lefebvre will be used. Method: A participatory and exploratory qualitative study design will be adopted and data gathered through group interviews, walk-abouts, key-informant interviews, on-line group interviews and observations. Context: Respondents recruited among Swedish-speaking parents in Finland and parents in Gothenburg, Sweden. Outcomes: This paper presents preliminary findings of the ongoing study. My plan is to publish the findings in internationel journals as a part of my doctoral thesis. The results will be useful in planning healthy living environments.