“How do I put this gently?”: articulating the link between racial selectivity in the sexual market and neighborhood selection in the residential market of a global city

Abstract

Abstract The global city is acted upon by a myriad of forces—commercial, cultural, diasporic, digital, identitarian, and political to name a few—on local, national, and transnational scales that produce steadily morphing patterns and concentrations of LGBTQ+ residential settlement in and across neighborhoods. Research has sought to unpack the push–pull factors and adhesive elements that exert influence on such residential configurations. This forum piece ventures to articulate empirically one such pattern that has not been approached in the literature, but has, as the title portends, been addressed in anecdote gently (read: cautiously) for some time: the link between an individual’s stated racial preference in sexual-partner choice and that individual’s selection of a neighborhood to live in that has a high percentage of residents of the preferred race.