From the Castro to Chelsea, this scrapbook-style collection celebrates 12 traditionally gay neighborhoods in America, past and present, and shows where the boys are--and were.

An in-depth look at America's changing gay neighborhoods Gay neighborhoods, like the legendary Castro District in San Francisco and New York's Greenwich Village, have long provided sexual minorities with safe havens in an often unsafe world. But as our society increasingly accepts gays and lesbians into the mainstream, are "gayborhoods" destined to disappear? Amin Ghaziani provides an incisive look at the origins of these unique cultural enclaves, the reasons why they are changing today, and their prospects for the future. Drawing on a wealth of evidence—including census data, opinion polls, hundreds of newspaper reports from across the United States, and more than one hundred original interviews with residents in Chicago, one of the most paradigmatic cities in America—There Goes the Gayborhood? argues that political gains and societal acceptance are allowing gays and lesbians to imagine expansive possibilities for a life beyond the gayborhood. The dawn of a new post-gay era is altering the character and composition of existing enclaves across the country, but the spirit of integration can coexist alongside the celebration of differences in subtle and sometimes surprising ways. Exploring the intimate relationship between sexuality and the city, this cutting-edge book reveals how gayborhoods, like the cities that surround them, are organic and continually evolving places. Gayborhoods have nurtured sexual minorities throughout the twentieth century and, despite the unstoppable forces of flux, will remain resonant and revelatory features of urban life.

Although the last decade has seen steady progress towards wider acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals, LGBTQ residential and commercial areas have come under increasing pressure from gentrification and redevelopment initiatives. As a result many of these neighborhoods are losing their special character as safe havens for sexual and gender minorities. Urban planners and municipal officials have sometimes ignored the transformation of these neighborhoods and at other times been complicit in these changes. Planning and LGBTQ Communities brings together experienced planners, administrators, and researchers in the fields of planning and geography to reflect on the evolution of urban neighborhoods in which LGBTQ populations live, work, and play. The authors examine a variety of LGBTQ residential and commercial areas to highlight policy and planning links to the development of these neighborhoods. Each chapter explores a particular urban context and asks how the field of planning has enabled, facilitated, and/or neglected the specialized and diverse needs of the LGBTQ population. A central theme of this book is that urban planners need to think "beyond queer space" because LGBTQ populations are more diverse and dispersed than the white gay male populations that created many of the most visible gayborhoods. The authors provide practical guidance for cities and citizens seeking to strengthen neighborhoods that have an explicit LGBTQ focus as well as other areas that are LGBTQ-friendly. They also encourage broader awareness of the needs of this marginalized population and the need to establish more formal linkages between municipal government and a range of LGBTQ groups. Planning and LGBTQ Communities also adds useful material for graduate level courses in planning theory, urban and regional theory, planning for multicultural cities, urban geography, and geographies of gender and sexuality.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people have established gathering spaces to find acceptance, form social networks, and unify to resist oppression. Framing the emergence of queer enclaves in reference to place, this volume explores the physical and symbolic spaces of LGBTQ Americans. Authors provide an overview of the concept of “place” and its role in informing identity formation and community building. The book also includes interactive project prompts, providing opportunities to practically apply topics and theories discussed in the chapters.

The Gayborhood: From Sexual Liberation to Cosmopolitan Spectacle explores the lived experiences of LGBT+ persons in an era of heightened visibility. Gay urban enclaves, known colloquially as gayborhoods, illustrate the evolution of LGBT+ political capacity building. Since their emergence after World War II, gayborhoods have homogenized at the expense of women, transgender, and nonwhite persons due to neoliberal policies promoted by urban planners. Thus, their popularization and economic vitality correlate with a loss of collective identity and space for some inhabitants. While gayborhoods were once diverse and inclusive spaces that rejected normative institutions of marriage and assimilation into dominant society, the stakeholders of these areas have now unashamedly aligned themselves with conformity and profitability to legitimize their existence. The contributors within The Gayborhood invite readers to reflect on the future of LGBT+ politics and look beyond the commercialized rainbow spectacle of gayborhoods to the communities and aspirations within.

The phrase ‘LGBT community’ is often used by policy-makers, service providers, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people themselves, but what does it mean? What understandings and experiences does that term suggest, and ignore? Based on a UK-wide study funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, this book explores these questions from the perspectives of over 600 research participants. Examining ideas about community ‘ownership’; ‘difference’ and diversity; relational practices within and beyond physical spaces; imagined communities and belongings; the importance of ‘ritual’ spaces and symbols, and consequences for wellbeing, the book foregrounds the lived experience of LGBT people to offer a broad analysis of commonalities and divergences in relation to LGBT identities. Drawing on an interdisciplinary perspective grounded in international social science research, the book will appeal to students and scholars with interests in sexual and/or gender identities in the fields of community studies, cultural studies, gender studies, geography, leisure studies, politics, psychology, sexuality studies, social policy, social work, socio-legal studies, and sociology. The book also offers implications for practice, suitable for policy-maker, practitioner, and activist audiences, as well as those with a more personal interest.

Winner of the 29th annual Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Studies All museums are sex museums. In Sex Museums, Jennifer Tyburczy takes a hard look at the formation of Western sexuality—particularly how categories of sexual normalcy and perversity are formed—and asks what role museums have played in using display as a technique for disciplining sexuality. Most museum exhibits, she argues, assume that white, patriarchal heterosexuality and traditional structures of intimacy, gender, and race represent national sexual culture for their visitors. Sex Museums illuminates the history of such heteronormativity at most museums and proposes alternative approaches for the future of public display projects, while also offering the reader curatorial tactics—what she calls queer curatorship—for exhibiting diverse sexualities in the twenty-first century. Tyburczy shows museums to be sites of culture-war theatrics, where dramatic civic struggles over how sex relates to public space, genealogies of taste and beauty, and performances of sexual identity are staged. Delving into the history of erotic artifacts, she analyzes how museums have historically approached the collection and display of the material culture of sex, which poses complex moral, political, and logistical dilemmas for the Western museum. Sex Museums unpacks the history of the museum and its intersections with the history of sexuality to argue that the Western museum context—from its inception to the present—marks a pivotal site in the construction of modern sexual subjectivity.