Queer cities: Why LGBTQ people flock to cities and how queer urban spaces are changing

(image credit: https://www.archdaily.com/1018012/queer-urban-design-planning-for-inclusive-cities)

    Earlier this year I read an article titled “A Different, Messier World” by P.E. Moskowitz, casually reposted on an Instagram story by an amateur queer theorist whose work I enjoy. The article discusses the ways in which queer culture of today differs from the queer culture of our past, mainly arguing that there has been a loss of physicality— the rise of the internet moved much of queer socializing and political organizing from physical spaces in US urban centers to online spaces, and this has had an effect on the discourses we see within the culture (https://www.thedriftmag.com/a-different-messier-world/). But the article really stuck with me because it made me hyperaware of how queer culture has been supported by urban infrastructure and geographies, and why queer people often flock to our cities. P.E. Moskowitz’s 2018 book How to Kill A City, which I read later in the year, reintroduced this topic to me with its discussion of gentrification, gayborhoods, and the hostility of the suburbs, and sparked my interest in the city as a queer haven once more. I have seen evidence of this in my life: most of my gay and trans friends have already used college to flee the suburbs of our childhood in favor of nearby cities. I myself love cities and hope to live in Chicago someday. The trope that gay people love cities is very much real, and is what pulled me into the world of urbanism, but I wasn’t aware of how important built environment is in making queer social life and political organizing possible. I feel this topic connects well to our class discussions of placemaking and built environment, so I want to look briefly at (a) what about cities makes them hotspots for queer culture and political organizing, (b) how this may change in the future, and (c) what we might do about this going forward.

    One of the essential components that allows queer culture to thrive in cities and die in suburbs/rural areas is simply density. Cities are distinguished from suburbs/rural areas by the sheer number of queer people present in one area, initially largely due to population density and later because of a reputation of acceptance and safety. Density allowed many queer people to find each other, forming social spaces (gay bars, for example), “gayborhoods,” and organizations for political activism and historical preservation (museums, art collectives, socialist organizations, mutual aid organizations, etc). The many queer people living their lives and connecting with each other were placemakers in many ways. These queer city cultures and subcultures are an intersection of the many perspectives who are constantly making a home for themselves— artists, activists, working class queer people, queer women, trans people, queer people of color, etc; queer people from all over the US flock to cities in hopes of experiencing this vibrant culture where they can finally stop feeling like an outsider. But the landscape of queer city life is changing.


    One of the biggest issues facing US cities right now (and for a long time) is gentrification, which P.E. Moskowitz roughly describes in How to Kill A City as “at its deepest level... about reorienting the purpose of cities away from being spaces that provide for the poor and middle classes and toward being spaces that generate capital for the rich” (22). Urban rent prices, including in gayborhoods, have been skyrocketing. Low and even middle-income residents are increasingly getting pushed out to cheaper neighborhoods and ultimately to the suburbs. Gayborhoods are becoming sanitized as those who created their culture (artists, activists, small business owners, etc) can no longer afford to live there. P.E. Moskowitz describes this in a way that has stuck with me partially due to its humor: “For an outsider, it's hard to get what's at stake in a place like San Francisco. As a gay guy from New York, I can look at the bars in the Castro, an area of the city historically home to a large gay population, and think, ‘This is an okay gayborhood.’ But if you've lived here for thirty years, your first thought might be, ‘This used to be a hotbed of political radicalism, and now it's gay Disney World’" (How to Kill a City p. 128). Gay culture in the city is becoming depoliticized and catered towards wealthy gay ‘tourists’ to gayborhoods who ultimately will generate more capital for the real estate investors and hipster business chains than previous low-income residents. Many of our cities are becoming largely unaffordable for the average gay person, with cost of living rising at shocking rates. The choice for many is to move out to the suburbs, “where they are underserved by jobs, transit, and community services. Across the United States... the suburbs are booming with the displaced" (How to Kill A City p. 8). The suburbs are built on the basis on individualism and isolation, with strict single-family homes, no walkability, and little support services. Queer culture and political organizing dies in the suburbs. As cities rapidly gentrify, it is a real possibility that a large portion of queer people will not be able to afford urban life, and will be faced with the isolation and hostility of the American suburb.


    But what do we do moving forward? Much of mainstream ‘queer urbanism’ is about creating visibility, often through public art or historical preservation. Arup’s 2021 video “Queering Public Space” largely focuses on placemaking and making queer history visible through public art (like the rainbow plaques project). While this kind of palatable queer urbanism is important, we need to go further. We need to encourage current political struggle for our rights and to improve our material conditions. We need to do our best to keep housing affordable and fight gentrification. We need to protect queer art, and queer healthcare, and access to basic needs, and we need to make sure our activism is led by the most marginalized among us. In Greater Greater Washington’s article “Why Do So Many Queer Folks Love Urbanism?” Les Anderson comments, “’We’ve seen what happens when straight people are in charge. They didn’t care if we were dying or not. That’s why we have a hand in all of these issues like housing, transit, and parks,’ she said. ‘For us as queer people urbanism is a matter of life or death’”(https://ggwash.org/view/79495/why-so-many-people-in-the-queer-community-love-urbanism). Our urban havens for queer people are being threatened, and we’re going to have to save them ourselves. We have to go beyond honoring queer history in our built environment— we need a deeply political fight to resist gentrification and maintain the queer spaces in our cities that have been a safe haven for generations of LGBTQ people looking for a place to thrive.

(note: If you're looking to learn more about how gentrification functions, I really highly recommend Moskowitz's How to Kill a City (it's available at Alden). It helped me understand cities so much more and completely changed the way I think about them. 10/10, one of my favorite nonfiction books!)