ancient cities

292 Gay Space
much more than the physical fragmentation of the
city or the social exclusion of citizens; it can also
be understood as representing the absolute secession
of some dwellers from civil society. Gated
community residents essentially wield their market-oriented
power as private property owners and
consequently reject citizenship-based interaction
with the state as part of civil society. As an extreme
interpretation, gated communities thus provide an
alternative reality for residents, one that is detached
and sheltered from the physical, social, economic,
and political attributes of wider society. However,
as indicated, the implications for the city and society
can be highly destructive.
Charlotte Lemanski
See also Common Interest Development; Crime; Divided
Cities; Suburbanization
Further Readings
Blakely, Edward J. and Mary G. Snyder. 1997. Fortress
America: Gated Communities in the United States.
Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Caldeira, Teresa P. R. 2000. City of Walls: Crime,
Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Davis, Mike. 1990. City of Quartz: Excavating the
Future in Los Angeles. London: Verso.
Glasze, Georg, Chris J. Webster, and Klaus Frantz. 2006.
Private Cities: Global and Local Perspectives. London:
Routledge.
Le Goix, Renaud and Chris Webster. 2008. “Gated
Communities.” Geography Compass 2(4):1189–1214.
Low, Setha. 2003. Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and
the Pursuit of Happiness and Fortress America.
London: Routledge.
Ga y sp a C e
Gay space, particularly urban clusters of leisure
venues serving a male homosexual clientele, first
attracted the attention of urban geographers and
sociologists in the late 1970s. As historians have
demonstrated, there were vital (and often overt)
urban homosexual subcultures in many major cities
from at least the eighteenth century onward.
However, it was not until the 1970s, with the
growth of the modern gay liberation movement,
that concentrations of gay venues were consolidated
in the landscape of major North American
and European cities and became the subject of academic
and popular attention. The title of this entry
consciously highlights the uneven gendering of the
geographies that have examined these spaces.
Early studies of gay space centered on the experience
of major metropolitan centers in the United
States. In a much cited study, Castells and Murphy
focused on the development of the Castro district
in San Francisco as gay territory. Their study
mapped concentrations of visible bars, clubs, and
retail outlets patronized by gay men; it also
attempted to map residential clustering by gay men
and examined the spread of votes cast in municipal
elections for pro-gay candidates. In the 1980s, this
work was extended to examine the role of gay men
in the gentrification of inner-city neighborhoods.
Initially, (male) researchers could not find similar
territorial concentrations of lesbians and theorized
that women had been socialized not to claim
space in the same way and furthermore were materially
disadvantaged by the systemic inequalities in
women’s income. Subsequent research has identified
districts (such as Park Slope in Brooklyn)
where lesbians have been primary agents of gentrification;
of course, lesbian bars also exist, but they
have frequently been more precarious and shortlived
than male-oriented venues. However, lesbian
and feminist scholars have contended that most
analysis of urban space is overinvested in reading
for public visibility and, consequently, overlooks
women’s use of the city. In contrast they advocate
expanding analyses to include women’s social networks,
domestic spaces, and quotidian routines to
offer a more comprehensive understanding of the
spatiality of lesbian lives. Such an approach also
offers further insights into bisexual space, as bisexuals
operate in both gay and heterosexual space as
well as creating bisexual spaces, and yet are seldom
visible (as bisexuals) in either.
Early studies of gay space tended to stress how
these were liminal spaces occupying marginalized
areas of the inner city. During the 1990s, many
clusters of gay space became recentered within
their cities, being integrated into urban regeneration
schemes and place marketing initiatives. This,
in turn, led many users of these sites to complain
that they were becoming systematically “de-gayed”