This paper offers a pragmatic, principally economic perspective on the body of work analysing the genesis and development of urban 'gay villages'. The Soho Gay Village in central London is presented as a case study. Its evolution and principal features are considered in the light of the existing corpus of research into gay agglomerations and the documented experiences of some other urban gay villages in England. It is suggested that, even with differing historical roots and widely differing levels and forms of municipal support, a recurrent developmental pattern seems to be discernible. This is characterised by an urban area in decline progressing through several broad stages of economic enterprise denoted by: sexual and legal liminality; gay male social and recreational opportunities; a widening service-sector business base; and, ultimately, the assimilation of the area into the fashionable mainstream.

This study explores the empirical relationships between GHG emissions and an extensive range of business performance measures for UK FTSE-350 listed firms over the first decade or so of such reporting. Despite the popular and policy generated environmental imperatives over this perioddalong with growing evidence of the corporate added-value of having an ‘environmental conscience’, voluntary disclosure of emissions has been slow to adopt by firms. The leading contribution is to present clear evidence of a non-linear relationship, initially increasing with firm performance and then decreasing. An extensive pattern of non-reporting of emissions is also observed over time, and prior literature has introduced questions of endogeneity existing between firm performance and emissions. Steps are taken to ensure confidence/robustness of the results to these concerns. Accordingly, a two-stage (Heckman-type) selection model is used to analyse the emissions-performance nexus conditional upon the firm choosing to report (i.e. treating the choice to report as being endogenously determined with firm performance). From thisdin addition to confirming the robustness of the non-linear relationshipdit can be observed that the decision to report emissions is not directly influenced by wider social/ governance disclosure attitudes of a firm, thus suggesting that firms disassociate environmental responsibility from social responsibility

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