The Globe profiles the “new” South End, in today’s paper.

The South End, domain of urban sophistication, has gone baby-gaga. Weekdays bring out brigades of mothers pushing strollers past art galleries and gay bars; weekends find fathers popping into cafes for lattes with their babies tucked into Baby Bjorns.

Young families have always lived in the South End, drawn by spacious townhouses and brownstones or the neighborhood’s public housing that offers subsidized apartments. What has changed, residents say, is that affluent young professionals who once moved away when they planned to have children began about five years ago to stay. Some now are upgrading from smaller, couple-size condos to four-bedroom units that can cost $2 million.