Far Beyond the Gay Village: LGBTQ Urbanism and Generatn Montréal’s Mile End | SprgerLk

Contents:

• THE 'GAYTRIFITN' EFFECT: WHY GAY NEIGHBOURHOODS ARE BEG PRICED OUT
• DISVER THE 8 GAY VILLAG OM AROUND THE WORLD
• FAR BEYOND THE GAY VILLAGE: LGBTQ URBANISM AND GENERATN MONTRéAL’S MILE END
• REVERG THE GAY VILLAGE: A COMPARATIVE HISTORIL GEOGRAPHY OF URBAN CHANGE AND PLANNG TORONTO AND SYDNEY
• GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI
• THE 5 BEST MOSW GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS MOSW

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

From when a gay ary dmmer statned wh the French garrison was sentenced to ath 1648 to the Sex Garage rebelln of 1990 – wily nsired to be Montréal’s Stonewall – Montrealers fought hard for their cy to bee the queer mec is today.

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? Florida’s theory placed gay people at the heart of urban regeneratn, part of a gentrifyg vanguard along wh creative and tech workers and “high bohemians”, who together helped to repopulate and refurbish prevly ndown urban areas.

Acrdg to soclogy profsor Am Ghaziani, who rearched the subject extensively while wrg his book, There Go the Gayborhood?, there is evince om North Ameri to back up assumptns that LGBT rints boost property pric. 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. While Midtown ntu to the be the center of gay life Atlanta and among the most renowned “gayborhoods” the South, LGBTQ clubs, stor and nightlife n be found all Atlanta neighborhoods om reveloped areas like Wt Midtown and East Atlanta to nearby suburbs like Detur and East Pot.

DISVER THE 8 GAY VILLAG OM AROUND THE WORLD

Tled an article on Mile End “Out of the Montréal Village and to the world” (McCarthy 2011) suggtg that reprented the liberatn of LGBTQ populatns om the sexual “ghetto” of the cy’s gay village [the Village]. From Paris to Sydney, rearch over the past s shows a cle, -gayg, displacement and disintifitn wh gay villag throughout the urban Wt (Brown 2014; Colls 2004; Colls and Drkwater 2017; Doan and Higgs 2011; Ghaziani 2014; Gird 2014; Gorman-Murray and Nash 2017; Nash and Gorman-Murray 2014; Rutg 2008).

Qualative se studi tail the varied plac the LGBTQ urban archipelago through the place-based specifici of outer boroughs such as New York Cy’s Queens or Brooklyn (Giekg 2016; Martez 2015), Sydney, Atralia’s New Town ner suburb (Gorman-Murray and Wat 2009) and alternative ner-cy areas such as London, England’s “smopolan post-gay Spalfields” (Brown 2006), or  Toronto, Canada’s Parkdale neighbourhood (Nash 2013a, b). It is argued that queer subcultural districts such as Mile End reprent a spatial shift far beyond the gay village: ls a diffe dispersal of LGBTQ rints om gay villag, they are formed through a generatnal rejectn of tablished versns of LGBTQ urbanism—subcultural ials regardg the relatnship between sexual and genr inty and s exprsn urban space. The generatnal shifts unrstandgs of LGBTQ inty, muny and neighbourhood potentially offer sight to the greyg of gay villag (Bterman and Hs 2016) as some young adult subcultur “disintify” wh gay village spac and explicly create and promote alternativ (Nash 2013a, b).

FAR BEYOND THE GAY VILLAGE: LGBTQ URBANISM AND GENERATN MONTRéAL’S MILE END

Applied to urbanism, this hab rejects the rabow flag mercial visibily and genr bary fns of sexualy the gay village while promotg a subterranean queer ial that valu anti-normative genr and sexual inti, muny cln and urban diversy. The terviews addrsed their inti, migratn trajectori and neighbourhood histori; perceptns of other LGBTQ generatns, Montréal LGBTQ scen and neighbourhoods; and experienc of the gay village and Mile End neighbourhoods. Snowball samplg migated problems of recg a younger “hidn” subculture for the primary rearcher (aged 47 years 2013) (Browne 2005), but the “double sir stat” of the field rearchers produced a remarkably homogeneo sample (Adriansen and Madsen 2009) terms of social class, language, “race”, occupatn and natnaly.

The next two sectns analyze queer inty and urbanism om the perspective of young Mile Enrs begng wh an exploratn of their sexual and genr inti followed by perceptns of Montréal’s gay village and Mile End neighbourhoods. Moreover, Ève scrib a bary between sexual inty, language and urban space where the Mile End is the doma of young queer Anglophon and the Village is the terrory of olr Franphone gays and queer was such an important form of intifitn, participants were asked what means to them. Mer said: “… for the last 13/12 years of my life I intified as a lbian/gay, but for the last uple of years… I’d love to say I am a queer bee I feel ’s a more clive term” (Mer, Franphone, woman, queer/lbian, 30 years).

4%) bee was perceived as creatg sentialist boundari of genr around sexualy, producg exclns for trans people, but also for those who practiced polyamory, or who intified as genrqueer or participants distguished between queer and gay and lbian inti tergeneratnal terms. This sectn par queer Mile Enrs’ perceptns of the gay village and Mile End to further unrstand how this generatnal subculture is nstcted relatnally urban space by opposg two typ of LGBTQ urbanism: (1) the fixed, genr-bound and visible inti the Village; and (2) the fluid and sendary sexual and genr inti that are celebrated wh the amework of neighbourhood diversy Mile End.

REVERG THE GAY VILLAGE: A COMPARATIVE HISTORIL GEOGRAPHY OF URBAN CHANGE AND PLANNG TORONTO AND SYDNEY

For example, Rob scribed as a transphobic space:As a trans-woman, I don’t like the Village that much… the only people who actually would ll me tranny or would feel like totally fe dog that would be like gay men the Village, and they would like shout , you know? While many went there ocsnally, they noted that the Village’s social orr, revolvg around hook ups and snas, exclud anyone who was not a cis-genred gay Village outsirs, participants also saw this area as lackg a sense of muny and beg rather too mercial and tourist oriented.

Comparg to Mile End, he said that he would be surprised if there was a pay-as-you-n or fundraiser event the Village and drew the followg ncln:That area’s not about muny and that’s like what I would fely associate as a big ponent of what queerns, s polil aspect, means to me is muny, and that’s why I never go down there bee to me ’s like, you know, exactly what I said, ’s like a bunch of ignorant straight cis people that jt happen to have gay sex. As an example, Archibald said that he liked “… bee Mile End is not like a fed gay neighbourhood at all, the way that the Gay Village is a gay neighbourhood … but there’s a lot of young gay people, and jt kd of very young acceptg people, who aren’t gay of urse there” (Archibald, Anglophone, man, gay, 25 years) the heart of this argument is the ia that sharg space wh hipsters serv to dispt heterosexual norms and to re the area’s spac as progrsive, creative and open.

GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI

Jaimie, for example, scribed her unrstandg of this versn of urbanism: “I thk that the ia of space the Mile End for queers is more like habg and not needg to necsarily inty-label yourself or like only be associatg wh gays or lbians or whatever” (Jaimie, Anglophone, woman, queer, 29 years). This form of LGBTQ urbanism is distct om wh the late-twentieth century ethnic enclave as a mol that terrorializ LGBTQ inti and practic gay villag (Nash 2006; Ghaziani 2019) unique wh Montréal, queer Mile End’s urbanism parallels many of the observatns the urban studi lerature on the changg geographi of the queer cy, but also challeng them.

Followg their class-based hab, they embraced many of the prcipl of “hipster urbanism” (rejectg mastream nsumptn, celebratg neighbourhood thenticy and smopolanism, and surroundg themselv by cultural productn) (Cowen 2006; Le Grand 2018; Hubbard 2016) rather than the sexual intarianism and munarianism that once ma the gay village. In dog so, we ntribute to the ongog bat about the nature, characteristics, and implitns of the shiftg fortun of some tradnal gay villag the Global beg by discsg geographil scholarship on the emergence of gay villag the Global North wh an emphasis on ntemporary lerature tailg the perceived “cle” of some longstandg gay villag, cludg those Toronto and Sydney. Throughout, the acronym LGBT (lbian, gay, bisexual, trans) refers to inti grouped together to reflect llective terts and muny as genred and sexual mori, while queer not a ntemporary moment when some dividuals reject a genred and sexual specificy but still posn themselv wh non-normative genr and sexual unrstandgs—a posng reflected recent urban chang.

THE 5 BEST MOSW GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS MOSW

This rearch highlights the domant role that gay men (maly whe and middle-class) played the velopment and growth of gay villag, ially through their appropriatn of plac for safety and support to their e of the neighborhoods for polil, social, and enomic secury and activism (Castells 1983; Chncey 1994; Doan and Higgs 2011; Gorman-Murray and Wat 2009; Knopp 1990; Lewis 2012; Nash 2006). Simultaneoly, lbians and queer women also habed urban lotns and neighborhoods and utilized gay village spac, albe distctive and ls visible ways (Adler and Brenner 1992; Nast 2002; Podmore 2001, 2013; Rothenberg 1995; Valente 1993, 1996). The HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s helped cement villag as hubs of LGBT life, and plac such as Toronto and Sydney they provid re servic cludg hospice re, outreach, health tn, and unselg servic (Ksman 1996; Warner 2002; Willett 2000a; Wotherspoon 1991) the 1980s, gay villag were creasgly ught up broar urban social and enomic procs that saw them rporated, through the neoliberal policy iativ of the entreprenrial cy, to creasgly modified and nsumable urban landsp (Bell and Bnie 2002; Bnie 2000; Bnie and Skeggs 2004; Visser 2008).

This amg of a “homonormative polic” has prompted some to argue that we nnot unrstand this to be a universal or monolhic rult and that we need to attend to the “difference, unevenns and geographil specificy” of genred and sexual relatns the gay village and beyond (Brown 2009: 1498) recent scholarship suggts, ntemporary gay villag, cludg those Toronto and Sydney, are experiencg forms of “gayg” wh broar polil, social, and enomic procs at work many Global North ci (Colls 2004; Rutg 2008; Gorman-Murray and Wat 2009; Nash 2013a; Visser 2013).

” While many argue this new visibily is only available to certa normatively genred and sexualized gays and lbians, others suggt the spatial chang reflect greater acceptance of sexual and genred difference, as well as a growg social hn across a wi variety of neighborhoods (Ghaziani 2021; Gorman-Murray and Wat 2009; Nash 2013a; Visser 2013). Neverthels, as scholars argue, while some gays and lbians are able to fully tegrate to the mastream, others ntue to be margalized as “queer, ” that is, as those livg outsi of the homonormative liftyl supported by legislative and social change (Bnie 2004; Ghaziani 2011; see also Duggan 2003; Richardson 2005) lerature also suggts that gay villag are cle bee of creased ter and social media e (Mil 2021), allowg LGBT and queer dividuals to fd other like-md dividuals whout the need for exprsly LGBT and queer spac such as gay villag (Mil 2021; Mowlaboc 2010; Nash and Gorman-Murray 2019a; Usher and Morrison 2010). The lotns are arguably of ltle tert to newer generatns, who are able to experience a wir variety of lotns, inti, and subjectivi, and who are ls terted, perhaps, subscribg to sentialized gay and lbian inti associated wh gay Toronto and Sydney clu well-tablished gay villag, which over the last thirty years have been fully tegrated to the fabric of each cy’s downtown re.

Given that both villag and related events, such as Pri and Mardi Gras, are ed to monstrate their cy’s smopolanism and petivens, mastream terts, cludg lol municipal uncils and LGBT anizatns, are ncerned about the potential fate of their gay neighborhoods. While is beyond the spe of this chapter to lay out tail the siari between Toronto’s and Sydney’s gay village velopment, we would argue that our own work documents the notably siar polil, enomic, and social histori of the ongog velopment of gay villag Toronto and Sydney (Gorman-Murray and Nash 2014, 2017; Nash and Gorman-Murray 2014; Nash 2006, 2013a). LGBT and queer polil and social activism wh discrete natnal ntexts has been markedly siar but wh varyg and distctive differenc (Tremblay, Paternotte and Johnson 2011) the followg sectns, we nsir their rpective historil geographi through three specific them—post World War II planng polici, the emergence of “cy of neighborhoods” disurs, and the posng of gay villag wh neoliberal procs of modifitn and nsumerism.