Breaking Down Segregation: Shifting Geographies of Male Same-Sex Households Within Desegregating Cities

From 2000 to 2010, the segregation of male same-sex couples from different-sex couples declined in almost all of the nation’s largest cities. This trend toward a more even distribution of male same-sex couples across city neighborhoods calls into question the demographic future of gay neighborhoods. However, it is unclear how exactly male same-sex couples are spatially reorganizing within desegregating cities. Multiple processes could be driving declining segregation, including declining shares of same-sex households within gay neighborhoods, the emergence of gay neighborhoods in new parts of the city, and/or a general dispersal of same-sex couples to almost all neighborhoods. Moreover, it is unclear what characteristics—like urbanicity, housing values, or racial/ethnic composition—define neighborhoods that have gained (or lost) same-sex partners. This chapter uses data from the 2000 and 2010 Decennial Censuses to investigate neighborhood-level changes within desegregating cities. The small number of increasingly segregated cities are also explored. Results indicate that increasing representation of male same-sex households across most neighborhoods and an expanding number of gay neighborhoods are important contributors to the trend of declining segregation. In contrast, the loss of gay neighborhoods from a city was fairly uncommon—most neighborhoods that obtained large concentrations of same-sex partners tended to keep those concentrations over time. Finally, the same residential expansion of same-sex households that occurred within desegregating cities did not occur in cities that experienced increasing segregation. These results have important implications for the spatial organization of same-sex households into the future. The chapter concludes with a discussion and critique of census data for the continued study of the geography and segregation of same-sex partners.

Why Gayborhoods Matter: The Street Empirics of Urban Sexualities

Urbanists have developed an extensive set of propositions about why gay neighborhoods form, how they change, shifts in their significance, and their spatial expressions. Existing research in this emerging field of “gayborhood studies” emphasizes macro-structural explanatory variables, including the economy (e.g., land values, urban governance, growth machine politics, affordability, and gentrification), culture (e.g., public opinions, societal acceptance, and assimilation), and technology (e.g., geo-coded mobile apps, online dating services). In this chapter, I use the residential logics of queer people—why they in their own words say that they live in a gay district—to show how gayborhoods acquire their significance on the streets. By shifting the analytic gaze from abstract concepts to interactions and embodied perceptions on the ground—a “street empirics” as I call it—I challenge the claim that gayborhoods as an urban form are outmoded or obsolete. More generally, my findings caution against adopting an exclusively supra-individual approach in urban studies. The reasons that residents provide for why their neighborhoods appeal to them showcase the analytic power of the streets for understanding what places mean and why they matter.

Far Beyond the Gay Village: LGBTQ Urbanism and Generation in Montréal’s Mile End

Research on LGBTQ neighbourhood formation in the urban West suggests that new patterns of community and identity are reshaping the queer inner-city and its geographies. As gay village districts “decline” or are “de-gayed” and new generations “dis-identify” with the urban ideals that once informed their production, LGBTQ subcultures are producing varied alternatives in other inner-city neighbourhoods. Beyond the contours of ethno-racialization and social class, generational interpretations of LGBTQ urbanism—subcultural ideals regarding the relationship between sexual and gender identity and its expression in urban space—are central to the production of such new inner-city LGBTQ subcultural sites. This chapter provides a qualitative case study Montréal’s of Mile End, an inner-city neighbourhood that, by the early 2010s, was touted as the centre of the city’s emerging queer subculture. Drawing on a sample of young-adult (22 to 30 years) LGBTQ-identified Mile Enders (n = 40), it examines generational shifts in perceptions of sexual and gender identity, queer community and neighbourhoods. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of queer Mile End for theorizing the contemporary queer inner-city.

Wearing Pink in Fairy Town: The Heterosexualization of the Spanish Town Neighborhood and Carnival Parade in Baton Rouge

The Spanish Town parade is currently the largest Carnival parade in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with hundreds of thousands of attendees dressed in pink costuming, cross-dressing, and wearing pink flamingo paraphernalia. This chapter traces the queer origins of the Spanish Town parade to the racially integrated bohemian gayborhood of Spanish Town in the 1980s. Using interviews, archival research, and participant observation, I argue that current LGBTQ residents of Baton Rouge, even those who have never lived in Spanish Town, claim a vicarious citizenship to the neighborhood and parade through an understanding of the queer origins of the parade in the 1980s and the parade’s beginning in a gayborhood. This vicarious citizenship is tempered by the heterosexualization of the contemporary Spanish Town parade. Although LGBTQ residents still attend the parade in large numbers, there is more ambivalence about the homophobic imagery in the parade and the consumption of gay culture by heterosexual parade participants.

Understanding Generation Gaps in LGBTQ+ Communities: Perspectives About Gay Neighborhoods Among Heteronormative and Homonormative Generational Cohorts

Using Strauss-Howe generational theory as a guiding structure, this chapter examines differences between generational identity for LGBTQ+ individuals compared to heteronormative generational identity. We theorize that LGBTQ+ individuals may identify with two generational cohorts—one defined by birth year and a second related to “coming of age” as a sexual minority. A case study examining the lifespan of four LGBTQ+ celebrity personalities demonstrates the concept of generational layering. We argue “generational layering” affects various aspects of LGBTQ+ life, including connection to place as reflected in attitudes of LGBTQ+ people regarding gay neighborhoods. The chapter concludes with five takeaway messages that clarify the relationship between LGTBQ+ people, the generational cohorts to which they belong and with which they identify, and the attitudes of various LGBTQ+ generational cohorts toward gay neighborhoods.

Are “Gay” and “Queer-Friendly” Neighborhoods Healthy? Assessing How Areas with High Densities of Same-Sex Couples Impact the Mental Health of Sexual Minority and Majority Young Adults

Neighborhoods with large concentrations of gay men, lesbians, and other sexual minorities have long served as places where sexual minority young adults find self-enhancing resources. Yet, it is unclear whether such neighborhood environments also confer health benefits. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we explored the relationship between the proportion of same-sex couples in neighborhoods and the mental health of sexual minority and majority young adults, controlling for other neighborhood- and individual-level factors. Results indicate that for sexual minorities, neighborhoods with higher percentages of same-sex couples are associated with lower levels of depression symptoms and higher levels of self-esteem. Conversely, for heterosexuals, there are no differences in health outcomes across neighborhood contexts. Taken together, the findings highlight the importance of striving for neighborhood-level understandings of sexual minority young adults and their mental health problems.

Plateaus and Afterglows: Theorizing the Afterlives of Gayborhoods as Post-Places

A number of commentators have acknowledged the decline of gayborhoods and the concomitant emergence of non-heteronormative diasporas in societies where sexual and gender diversity is normalized (Ghaziani 2015; Nash and Gorman-Murray 2017; Bitterman 2020). Academic studies tend to focus on the new lives that are being led beyond the gayborhood and the diminished distinctiveness of the territories left behind (e.g. Ghaziani 2014). In contrast, this chapter explores the possibility that gayborhoods can continue to influence sociospatial dynamics, even after their physical presence has diminished or disappeared altogether. Individuals and collectives may still be inspired by the memories, representations, and imaginaries previously provided by these erstwhile places. Indeed, the metaphor of a non-heteronormative diaspora relies on an ‘origin’ from which a cultural network has dispersed. In this sense gayborhoods can continue to function as post-places, as symbolic anchors of identity that operate even if they no longer exist in a material form, even if they are used simply as markers of ‘how far the diaspora has come’. The proposition that gayborhoods are becoming post-places could be more fully theorized in a number of ways, but the approach here is to adapt Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987: 22) notion of plateaus, which denote a “region of intensities whose development avoids any orientation towards a culmination point or external end”. From this perspective gayborhoods are not spatial phenomena that reach a climax of concentration and then disappear through dissipation. Instead, they can be described as becoming more intense and concrete in the latter half of the twentieth century before gradually fading after the new millennium as they disperse gradually into a diaspora as memories, habits, and so forth. Put another way, non-climactic gayborhoods leave ‘afterglows’, affects that continue to exert geographical effects in the present and near future. This conceptualization is consequential for theory, practice, and political activism, and ends the main body of this edited volume on a more ambitious note.

Let’s (not) Go Outside: Grindr, Hybrid Space, and Digital Queer Neighborhoods

Developments in mobile digital technologies are disrupting conventional understandings of space and place for smartphone users. One way in which location-based media are refiguring previously taken-for-granted spatial traditions is via GPS-enabled online dating and hook-up apps. For sexual minorities, these apps can reconfigure any street, park, bar, or home into a queer space through a potential meeting between mutually attracted individuals, but what does this signify for already-existing queer spaces? This chapter examines how smartphone apps including Grindr, Tinder, and Blued synthesize online queer encounter with offline physical space to create a new hybrid terrain predicated on availability, connection, and encounter. It is also a terrain that can sidestep established gay neighborhoods entirely. I explore how this hybridization impacts on older, physically rooted gay neighborhoods and the role that these neighborhoods have traditionally played in brokering social and sexual connection for sexual minorities. Few would deny that location-based apps have come to play a valuable role in multiplying opportunities for sexual minorities. However, the stratospheric rise of these technologies also provokes questions about their impact on embodied encounter, queer community, and a sense of place. A decade on from Grindr’s release, this chapter evaluates the impact of location-based media on gay spaces and reflects on what the increasing hybridization of online and offline spaces for same-sex encounter might mean for queer lives of the future.

A Queer Reading of the United States Census

LGBTQ neighborhoods face change. Planning for these neighborhoods requires data about LGBTQ residential concentration. Some analysts have used US Census same-sex partner data to make judgments about LGBTQ neighborhoods. Two agency actions make this reliance problematic. The US Census was required to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act and reassigned some LGBTQ responses in a heteronormal way. The Census also assigned sex based upon patterns of names. These US Census actions of gay removal and sex assignment to datasets raise questions about the usefulness of the partner dataset. A queer reading of the census may give a better representation of neighborhood development and decline. Data are developed for four queer neighborhoods: the West Village in New York City, Center City Philadelphia, Midtown Atlanta, and Midtown Kansas City. The results show that queer attributes of these areas grew to about 1990. Some queer attributes may have declined some from their peak. The results raise questions about social surveys, the closet, and the direction of LBGTQ neighborhoods in the twenty-first century. LGBTQ displacement has occurred.

After the Life of LGBTQ Spaces: Learning from Atlanta and Istanbul

Many gay villages (or “gayborhoods”) arose in the wake of the gay liberation movement attracted a good deal of academic research within the last 40 years. Unfortunately, this hyper focus on certain spaces often populated by white gay men has frequently eclipsed research on other types of LGBTQ areas as well as other geographies beyond the global north. This chapter aims to address this gap, taking an ordinary cities perspective (Robinson, 2006) and asking how we can develop models that are conceptually useful for understanding the life of a more diverse array of LGBTQ spaces across the globe. To answer this question we avoid linear models of change by developing a new model based on a conceptual framework derived from physics: centripetal and centrifugal forces. The advantage of this model is its explicit recognition of the ways that social, economic, and political forces and their manifestations influence queer spaces. We use two cases from relatively under-studied regions; Atlanta and Istanbul to illustrate the utility of this framework. The “in-betweenness” of these cities, linking south and north as well as west and east, makes them a haven for queers and others fleeing the conservative surroundings in the search for more attractive and welcoming places for marginalized LGBTQ individuals. This chapter draws on the authors’ lived experiences, prior research, and additional interviews to conduct a relational reading of queer spaces with emphasis on the ways that LGBTQ people circulate and congregate in a wider range of urban areas. This comparative strategy and relational reading of queer spaces expands the narrow focus from normalized narratives of gayborhoods to a broader “analysis of the heterogeneity and multiplicity of metropolitan modernities” (Roy 2009, p. 821) of queer spaces.