The 'gaytrifitn' effect: why gay neighbourhoods are beg priced out | Ci | The Guardian

Contents:

• THE 'GAYTRIFITN' EFFECT: WHY GAY NEIGHBOURHOODS ARE BEG PRICED OUT
• GAY FORT LRDALE
• “THE WHOLE NEIGHBOURHOOD IS BEG GAY!” REFLECTNS ON THE EFFECTS OF GEOLOTED DATG APPS ON THE PRACTICE AND PERCEPTN OF THE URBAN SPACE OF GAY MEN MAJOR FRENCH CI
• WHO ARE THE PEOPLE YOUR GAYBORHOOD? UNRSTANDG POPULATN CHANGE AND CULTURAL SHIFTS LGBTQ+ NEIGHBORHOODS
• ARE “GAY” AND “QUEER-FRIENDLY” NEIGHBORHOODS HEALTHY? ASSSG HOW AREAS WH HIGH DENSI OF SAME-SEX COUPL IMPACT THE MENTAL HEALTH OF SEXUAL MORY AND MAJORY YOUNG ADULTS
• MOVG TO LGBT HALIFAX, CANADA? HOW TO FD YOUR PERFECT GAY NEIGHBORHOOD!

THE 'GAYTRIFITN' EFFECT: WHY GAY NEIGHBOURHOODS ARE BEG PRICED OUT

Affluent and unhampered by children – or so the myth go – this group is always the g vanguard of gentrifyg areas, pricg out long-term lols and leavg behd a trail of look-but-don’t-touch furnure shops and overpriced are urban gay people who are watchg their stutns and neighbourhoods disappear merely reapg what they sowed? The muny anisatn LGBT Detro has been tryg to enurage the (unofficial) foundg of a gay village the cy, as a way of providg more solidary and support for a muny that’s weaker for beg geographilly the anisatn’s director Curtis Lipsb explas: “We had a few areas where LGBT people moved to after the send world war, but they lasted only until the last major whe flight, when a large number of whe gays and lbians moved to the northern suburbs. This visibily of gay men everyday life is one of the reasons why Joel Simkhai, the creator of Grdr, veloped the applitn: “Grdr, fs your pocket, you n e by walkg, at the rtrant, at the gym, when you go abroad, on the b, when you que a shop, when you go to a ncert, ” he explaed an terview given to the French magaze Miroir/Mirroirs 2013, before addg that “Grdr acpani you everyday life and that is what mak the difference.

Even if is hard to measure the phenomenon, fake profil are very mon: the creatn of a profile often only requir an email addrs, and is que possible for the same person to create several ’s e, and more generally datg applitns, strongly renfigure homosexual spatiali, by partng the visibily of homosexualy om the historil centrali that have bee gay neighbourhoods and muny plac, and by allowg enunters everywhere, at least theory.

The succs of Grdr-type applitns among gays, and their failure wh lbians, is th partly explaed by relatnships to genred and asymmetril productn of hybrid spatiali th appears strongt for datg apps siar to Grdr, and the most nsely populated plac, that is, the large metropolis where populatn nsi and nnectns only require participants to go a few hundred meters to pletely renew the profil displayed. Ghaziani, however, qualifi the ia of a cle of gay neighbourhoods and shows that their centraly, though seemgly weakened, remas pable, both mds and dividual applitns have unniably accelerated the diversifitn dynamics as they -terrorialise the ma functn of muny plac which was to form safe spac nducive to teractns between homosexual dividuals (Miller, 2015). Even if the Marais has been affected by the same dynamics of the apparent cle gay neighbourhoods as elsewhere, remas the richt area LGBT bs, both Paris and the relative discretn of homosexual life the provc and the ntrastg valy of the Marais, g to Paris to live one’s homosexualy is a stcturg element of the gay imagary France.

GAY FORT LRDALE

This ia of “pockets of gay time/space” is que siar to what Grdr produc nsely populated spac and helps to unrstand the enthiasm of many men for the app, as explaed by Richard, for example, rememberg when he disvered the app: “I knew when Grdr was lnched, and by the way, was a b revolutnary, I remember, and I already had a smartphone so I found credibly fantastic. In many ways, the revelatn of urban -prence among applitn ers seems to create a bubble of homosexualy around them, dimishg the sense of lonels associated wh the visibily of sexual mori on a daily addn, there is a greater nnectn between plac equented daily or regularly and the geography of datg. The management of geolotn by dividuals th reveals the renfiguratn of junctns to visibily, stcturg the trajectori of lkage between everyday spac and the experience of homosexualy that applitns perm giv rise to multiple forms of negotiatn the way of makg onelf visible on the virtual terface.

(Photo by the thor 2021)Full size imageThe e of applitns spac is already strongly nducive to gay socialisg; provis even greater potential for dat by offerg new channels of teractn wh the spac, as shown by ethnographic works muny settgs (Stempfhuber & Liegl, 2016; Vorobjovas-Pta & Dalla-Fontana, 2019).

“THE WHOLE NEIGHBOURHOOD IS BEG GAY!” REFLECTNS ON THE EFFECTS OF GEOLOTED DATG APPS ON THE PRACTICE AND PERCEPTN OF THE URBAN SPACE OF GAY MEN MAJOR FRENCH CI

Bdette nducted a long ethnographic survey Tokyo’s historic gay neighbourhood and found that the tensive e of applitns and social works bars and clubs, for the young men he met and terviewed, helps to make the Ni-Chome district “both a physil ‘gay town’ and an ‘imagary’ affective space” (Bdette, 2019: 102). Apart om intifyg as LGBTQ+, a high-e Black female cis-genred lbian, for example, her journey to unrstand and exprs her own sexual orientatn, may have ltle mon wh a middle-e gay genr-queer Asian male who both may have ltle mon wh a middle-age Whe genr-nonnformg trans dividual quietly explorg bisexualy at mid-life.

It is the differenc that fuel a grassroots mobilizatn among LGBTQ+ people to persevere through adversy; gay neighborhoods th serve as cubators for empowerment and social change and serve as home base for social movements and the fight for equaly that ultimately benefs every rner of society.

1(Source Image urty of William Ivancic)In Chigo and other ci, rints of gay neighborhoods adapt to COVID-19 guil cludg mask wearg and spatial distancgFull size image2 Nomenclature: Everyone BelongsThe semantics of “gay” have changed over time and the chang reflect shifts attu and shifts the evolutn of mastream perceptn. In this ve, although many gay neighborhoods were historilly anchored by a populatn of gay cis men (Chncey 2008; Podmore 2021), we nsir a “gay” neighborhood to be urban space wh some gree of tolerance clive of gay men, lbian women, trans+ dividuals, tersex dividuals, qutng dividuals, and var other sexual among like-md people, LGBTQ+ rints sought llective secury to addrs their feelgs of disenanchisement and safeguard agast opprsn manifted hostily and vlence (Lria and Knopp 1985). Throughout this chapter and this book, we nsir a neighborhood to be a basic buildg block of a cy (Forsyth 2001), and for nvenience we terchangeably e the terms “gayborhood, ” “gay neighborhood, ” “gay enclave, ” “gay district, ” “gay village” and “LGBTQ+ neighborhood”; we acknowledge the limatns of the labels.

WHO ARE THE PEOPLE YOUR GAYBORHOOD? UNRSTANDG POPULATN CHANGE AND CULTURAL SHIFTS LGBTQ+ NEIGHBORHOODS

Gay neighborhoods emerged over this perd as a safe haven for ee exprsn and a rpe for all manner of people ostracized or shunned by mastream society om prosecutn, judgement, and gay neighborhoods were seed the settlement and movement pattern of sexual mori begng the first half of the twentieth century, and the history of gay neighborhoods is well documented lerature (Chncey 2008; Ghaziani 2015a; Higgs 1999; Niedt 2021; Orne 2017).

ARE “GAY” AND “QUEER-FRIENDLY” NEIGHBORHOODS HEALTHY? ASSSG HOW AREAS WH HIGH DENSI OF SAME-SEX COUPL IMPACT THE MENTAL HEALTH OF SEXUAL MORY AND MAJORY YOUNG ADULTS

Origal and inic LGBTQ+ neighborhoods— large ci such as Berl (Schöneberg), Istanbul (Taksim Square), London (Ltle Compton Street), Los Angel (Wt Hollywood, which beme Ameri’s first gay cy), Mexi Cy (Zona Rosa), Miami (South Beach), New York (Greenwich Village and Chelsea), Paris (LeMarais), Sydney (Oxford Street), San Francis (the Castro), São Plo (Rua Frei Cane), Tokyo (Ni-chōme), Toronto (Church Street), and Washgton, DC (DuPont Circle)—tered maly to gay men (lbians often did not have a notable prence). Each gay neighborhood has s own unique reasons for beg and circumstanc for velopment (Gorman-Murray and Nash 2021) and nsequently the velopment and evolutn of dividual gayborhoods large urban centers—perceived as the “natural space” for gays and lbians (Higgs 1999)—opportuni gay neighborhoods for leisure and socializatn brought together the formative elements for the velopment of muny. 2(Source Image urty of Daniel Baldw Hs)The gay village Manchter, England, surrounds Canal Street and is one of the largt gay neighborhoods anywhereFull size imageMany people intifyg as LGBTQ+ seek eedom of personal exprsn, while others seek anonymy gay neighborhoods, where they n live their liv ee of judgement or persecutn.

MOVG TO LGBT HALIFAX, CANADA? HOW TO FD YOUR PERFECT GAY NEIGHBORHOOD!

Gay neighborhoods and their rints have been wily accepted as signifint forc leadg and advotg for posive urban change and have rced the effects of LGBTQ+ mory stat by helpg to enhance people’s unrstandg about sexual mori (Doan and Higgs 2011; Gorman-Murray and Nash 2021), and LGBTQ+ muny members—and ed all of society—n experience an improved qualy of life when there is an creased level of neighborhoods also provid a means of entry for mastream society to better unrstand LGBTQ+ dividuals and LGBTQ+ culture. As a rult, the gay neighborhoods were ually passed over for large publicly-fund urban renewal projects (Gorman-Murray and Nash 2021), thereby protectg the tegry of the built environment and often sparg the neighborhoods om the urban planng missteps mon the mid- to late-twentieth century (Jabs 1961).

3(Source Image urty of Daniel Baldw Hs)Gay bars are anchor stutns the Stanley Street Gay Quarter Liverpool, EnglandFull size imageWhile gay neighborhoods first emerged as margal outposts, many have transformed (and gentrified) the last few s to bee universally sought-after districts.

4(Source Image urty of Daniel Baldw Hs)The Zona Rosa (“Pk Zone” English) is loted near the historic center of Mexi Cy and featur retail outlets and nightlife venu amid a gay munyFull size imageEstablished gay neighborhoods now embody a virtual dimensn for LGBTQ+ nnectn (Mil 2021), perhaps refg the importance of physil place. The closure of gay bars, emergg virtual gay spac, generatnal disnnect, and chang the character of gay neighborhoods are remrs that as the plac transn om beg home to generatns rooted stggle to playgrounds of generatns beneftg om that stggle, now may be a germane time to exame the prent plate the trajectory of gay neighborhoods.