LGBT Neighbourhoods and ‘New Mobilities’: Towards Understanding Transformations in Sexual and Gendered Urban Landscapes

Abstract

In this article we apply insights from ‘new mobilities’ approaches to understand the shifting sexual and gendered landscapes of major cities in the global North. The empirical context is the purported ‘demise’ of traditional gay villages in Toronto, Canada and Sydney, Australia, and the emergence of ‘LGBT neighbourhoods’ elsewhere in the inner city. We reinterpret the historical geography of twentieth century LGBT lives and the associated ‘rise and fall’ of gay enclaves through the lens of the ‘politics of mobility’. In this reading, it is apparent that multifaceted movements — migration, physical and social mobility, and motility — underpin the formation of gay enclaves and recent transformations in sexual and gendered landscapes. After the second world war, LGBT communities in the global North were embedded in specific historical geographies of mobility and we trace these in the Canadian and Australian contexts. The ‘great gay migration’ from the 1960s to the 1980s has been joined by new LGBT constellations of mobility in the 2000s, and these have imprinted upon the sexual and gendered landscapes of Toronto and Sydney.

Urban preservation and the queerying spaces of (un)remembering: Memorial landscapes of the Miami Beach art deco historic district

“…mobility capital; see Nash and Gorman-Murray, 2014) as well as the ensuing distinct place-based preservation. Despite prolonged global queer memorialisations including World Aids Day, which have addressed the loss and struggle of those lives affected by HIV/AIDS, the aforementioned dramatic paradox has not quite taken up proportionate coverage in art deco memorial practice.…”

“…This can be performed by engaging more profoundly with social transitions and mobilities that intersect identity markers beyond sexuality alone (e.g. Gieseking, 2016;Nash and Gorman-Murray, 2014). Art deco memorial practices could especially make strenuous efforts to both further address and redress lived realities of those marginalised, or even invisibilised, in the (recent) past and present.…”

“…Another complexion that queries gay spaces revolves around realities of transience, which signal the in-and outmigration and social mobilities within the area. In the wake of ever-advancing mobile digital technologies, it should be stressed that LGBTQ communities have become increasingly socio-spatially augmented alongside mobile, dissipated, embodied and, therefore, fluid realities (Nash and Gorman-Murray, 2014) Ð and so are queer memories (Castiglia and Reed, 2011;Gieseking, 2016).…”

Canaries in the mine? Gay community, consumption and aspiration in neoliberal Washington, DC

“…I've been there a couple of times. It is truly an African-American bar, and it's where African American men go to meet African American men and that's who's there … It's busier than it has been, and that has to be-because depending on who you are and what your comfort level is-you might not want to walk into JR's and you certainly might not want to walk into JR's by yourself (Carl,43,African American) Interestingly, these narratives suggest that the more diffuse commercial landscape of the new gay D.C. did not necessarily offer the tolerance and diversity espoused by the creative city thesis (Florida 2002(Florida , 2005 or the more inclusive alternatives to the traditional gay village observed elsewhere (Nash 2013;Nash and Gorman-Murray 2014). Instead, men of colour have lost some of their key social spaces and segregation has become further retrenched as white, economically established men aspire to socialise in private and professional spaces.…”

“…So-called gay villages now have more heterosexual residents (Reynolds 2009;Ghaziani 2014), significant gay venues have closed in many cities (Mattson 2015), there is a growing gay presence in the suburbs (Tongson 2011) and new 'gay-friendly' (though not necessarily gayspecific) neighbourhoods are emerging in urban peripheries (Gorman-Murray and Waitt 2009;Nash and Gorman-Murray 2014;Kanai and Kentamaa-Squires 2015). The 'preferences' of the gay community are often positioned as a causative link in the changing landscape of gay residential and commercial spaces.…”