Abstract
AbstractThis chapter argues that the historical geographies of Toronto’s Church and Wellesley Street district and Sydney’s Oxford Street gay villages are important in understanding ongoing contemporary transformations in both locations. LGBT and queer communities as well as mainstream interests argue that these gay villages are in some form of “decline” for various social, political, and economic reasons. Given their similar histories and geographies, our analysis considers how these historical geographies have both enabled and constrained how the respective gay villages respond to these challenges, opening up and closing down particular possibilities for alternative (and relational) geographies. While there are a number of ways to consider these historical geographies, we focus on three factors for analysis: post-World War II planning policies, the emergence of “city of neighborhoods” discourses, and the positioning of gay villages within neoliberal processes of commodification and consumerism. We conclude that these distinctive historical geographies offer a cogent set of understandings by providing suggestive explanations for how Toronto’s and Sydney’s gendered and sexual landscapes are being reorganized in distinctive ways, and offer some wider implications for urban planning and policy.
Highlights
We examine the historical geographies of the iconic gay villages in Toronto’s Church and Wellesley Street district and Sydney’s Oxford Street
The Business Improvement Association (BIA) formed a close association with the LGBT community, and following the successful World Pride and PanAm bids, the BIA and LGBT activists, with the support of Councilor Kristyn Wong-Tam, launched a planning study to determine the future direction of the gay village
We argue that the distinct historical geographies of the Church-Wellesley and Oxford Street gay villages help to position each differently within the urban fabric of, respectively, Toronto and Sydney
Summary
J. Nash and multidimensional processes fomenting an ongoing and distinctive reordering of gendered and sexual landscapes occurring in both Toronto and Sydney. We contribute to the ongoing debates about the nature, characteristics, and implications of the shifting fortunes of some traditional gay villages in the Global North. We begin by discussing geographical scholarship on the emergence of gay villages in the Global North with an emphasis on contemporary literature detailing the perceived “decline” of some longstanding gay villages, including those in Toronto and Sydney. We explain why a comparative historical geography of Toronto and Sydney is insightful. We present the distinctive historical geographies underpinning the emergence of each city’s gay neighborhoods in the post-World War II period, discussing convergences and divergences. Throughout, the acronym LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) refers to identities grouped together to reflect collective interests and community as gendered and sexual minorities, while queer denotes a contemporary moment when some individuals reject a gendered and sexual specificity but still position themselves within non-normative gender and sexual understandings—a positioning reflected in recent urban changes
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