Been talking to homies lately (both queer and not) about how few public spaces are 1) unpoliced, 2) accessible to those without money and 3) non-heteronormative. Thank you for this!
Hi. I’m 53, gay, came of age during the AIDS crisis. I remember 12-inch Dance Records, The Coffee Stop - full of Keith Haring art, Lambda Rising, and oh so much more about Dupont Circle of the 1980s to the early part of the 2000s. In 1993, i helped found the first iteration of NoVA Pride, and learned of Dulles Triangles, a gay/lesbian social group in Reston, Virginia. Reston felt very far away from me. I’ve lived in Reston for 20 years now, and Triangles have come to be my queer community. So even in the suburbs, we carry on, creating our own spaces, same as it ever was. Sigh.
BIDs gives a name to something I didn’t have a name for, and it’s what felt off to me about living in Boystown in Chicago and honestly, what feels off about all of Chicago to me. All the modernism and and leftism that I thought I was going to get when moving to a gayborhood in a big city in a blue state (away from the gay friendliest mid-sized city in a red state) was completely deflated by how all of it is just about places where you can buy things, and places where tourists can buy things. The people who were left out were right in my face there too, because a lot of homeless trans teens (mostly Black people) slept on the ground outside of my apartment. The Northalsted Business Alliance is notoriously hostile towards them, it’s not uncommon for the actual lefties in the neighborhood to talk about black people being followed all around the store if they enter one of the Alliance-member businesses. I couldn’t stand the place. It felt like I’d gotten to the supposed promised land of queerness only to find out that the promise was that I would have every opportunity to be just as much of a good capitalist as any other white person in America.
This is an intersection I've been waiting for: leftist, gay, and urban planning. I've not usually seen these three talking together even though I know it's happened. It's part of myself I've wanted to knit together, and it really helps to see how others do it to get ideas. Leftists until recently wanted nothing to do with the queers, and new urbanism, while promising in some ways, I've noticed has long been rather focused on the creative classes and not really talking enough to low income, blue collar, or working class people like myself. Neoliberalism and its very successful campaign against socialism has really robbed urbanists and many queers of a way to talk meaningfully about so many issues. I remember the pervasive belief in the 1990s that America was a classless society and never really buying it because I grew up with so much evidence to the contrary. It's hard to stand up to grown ups as a kid when you know something in their explanations seems wrong and you know that you're young and inexperienced. Obviously class isn't the only piece of the puzzle, but it often is a big one, and these libertarian types and free market fundamentalists tie themselves in knots trying to get around the issue of class. Another thing homonormativity makes me think of is the understandable reaction about a set way of being gay. Not all of us conform to it, but I've come to appreciate that there is much value in having a uniquely queer identity. The problem with being a melting pot is that it tends to homogenize everything; it files down the hard edges that make various identities unique. Additionally, I've noticed that encouragement to be part of the melting pot usually comes from the top, encouraging people on the bottom the surrender certain things to fit in better that otherwise can't easily be assimilated. It isn't neutral. Being different isn't something you should have to apologize for. I got way more thoughts on this, but it's outside the topic of urbanism. I'm glad to see something like this finally online. Thanks!
youre so charming! it's such a relief to have someone else talking about these niche planning/urban concepts that i've exhausted my friends and coworkers with LOL
I feel like your the first person I've ever seen who really reminds me of myself. I too am a cis gender masculine passing white bisexual male. I don't know if I've ever seen anyone in my life who i felt more in common with than you. Thanks for being visible and letting me know I'm not alone. and thanks for your content and another great video.
I'm so stoked to have found you. I'm a rural poor white, turned city hybrid, autistic trans gay. Though I'm in the college neighborhood of this metropolis, probably the most accepting of any form of eccentricity, I'm not out as autistic in person, I'm generally not out as trans either. But I'm 35 and unwired my colonizer psyche and am itching to help build a renter's union and need so much research. Stoked to have found a soft spoken and engaging person to spend time learning from. Stay regulated 🍉✌️
Thank you so much! Not sure if you watched my most recent video or not, but I recommend the book “Abolish Rent” if you’re interested in tenants unions.
You look so cute and good with this black shirt honestly❤️❤️❤️ (struggling fashion student) This video is amazing, informative and really eye opening, thank you
This channel is simply fantastic! Although I'm not really familiar with theoretical concepts in geography and urbanism, I think I can follow and appreciate most of your points. I am learning so much from it! Greetings from Brazil!
Here's how immigrant communities are building dual power in neighborhoods: Rizal says the Bhutanese and Nepali families are very close and typically live in one house together. They often share their income until they can afford to buy a home and a car. He says they are usually hesitant to take out loans from banks and regularly loan each other money so they don't have to pay interest. "Our community is so much united," he says. "We work. For example, if you have a family of six people and they all work and they make $1,500 a month, they stay together in the same house. So six times $1,500 is $9,000 coming a month. They will spend only $2,000 for expenditures. In a year, they buy a house." He adds, "So then they buy one house with one brother. They work again together, make that money, buy another house. By six years they'll buy six houses. Easily. They don't bother to [get a] loan from the bank."
Great writeup. The BID in New Orleans is a weird one, because while the French Quarter may be the largest concentration of queer residences/businesses, it's also home to a LOT of other historical communities, and the Downtown Development District covers not just the French Quarter but also the Central Business District to act as an entity that handles the vast majority of tourism dollars. Also the DDD doesn't do any sort of branding for the queer area of Bourbon, the individual bars mostly take it upon themselves. There's a smaller area outside of the French Quarter in the Marigny that has been developing over the last couple of decades
As a straight white cis man, this video seemed extremely informative to me. Like, obviously neoliberalism sucks, but I did t really realize that gayborhoods were dispersing or that neoliberalism was to blame. I guess because so many neighborhoods that I enjoy fly rainbow flags and since I'm not super integrated to the gay community it seemed fine. I've always been a little critical of bougie neighborhoods that have black lives matter and pro trans/gay/any other marginalized group since it seems a bit like virtue signaling where affluent (mostly) whites are supportive in voice only. Still, I guess I never realized how these things can create such a facade for gayborhoods and give a friendly face to gentrification of gayborhoods in particular.
Watching the original American Queer As Folk is so alien to me. It’s about a group of queer friends and takes place in a gayborhood in Pittsburg, liberty street. Gay diners, streets lined with gay bars, gay community centers, complex queer community, the whole package really (admittedly very white tho). When a lesbian couple moves to the wealthy white area to raise their kid, everyone pokes fun of them. Seemed like heaven to 15 year old me living in one of the most unfriendly countries for queer people.
Ah! A queer urbanist. Theres so many tbh, but still love to see more of us ❤️. I want to live in a gayborhood. I love that I discovered your channel its amazing I hope it grows because you deserve it!
Loved the video. I've talked with other fringe queers about the respectability politics of queers, but "homonormativity" wraps it up in a bow, and has some academic research behind it, so I'll probably start using it. The Lisa Duggan quote about the queer sedative is so true. I think it's true of the liberal politics of my entire life. Only recently has leftism cracked back into the mainstream and dragged the corpse of the Democratic party along for the ride. I like how you said "Straight-majority places where straight-owned businesses fly rainbow flags." The disconnect between pride month libs and the utter silence on the ongoing trans genocide is something to behold. We were taught MLK and women's rights. The lesson from those was that you peacefully protest for legal recognition, you get it, and then everything is fine forever. Curiously left out of these lessons are modern examples of the Black wealth gap or ongoing sexual harassment. Or the nonpeaceful actions that helped those movements achieve their goals. Or the implication that every minority group has to "go through" a period of majority intolerance - we see this now with trans people, under-18s with no say in politics, polyamorous people, kinksters, etc. The "homonormative beliefs" page was 50% good and 50% non-sequiter for me. Liberation doesn't start or end with Target selling pride merch, but it's probably better than them not selling it. I don't think queers have internalized straight neighborhoods as better than gay neighborhoods because as you've said, there basically aren't gay neighborhoods anymore. For that to be a belief, the choice would have to be offered. I do agree that queers police other queer expression way too much. The "born this way" and "same love" thing was a helpful branding exercise ahead of marriage legalization, but further research has been really out of the public eye. Solving this is beyond me but I do have some ideas that might orient us towards gayborhoods once again. Sadly, they are also aligned with capital. Greater thinkers than me who are in the field rather than watching RUclips videos about it might have to chime in. The most successful queer living I've seen so far is queer group homes. That's majority-queer living under one roof, run democratically. Spreading that requires rich queers, possibly in the tech sector and working remotely to have access to the national real estate market. If one group home is successful and the social network is large enough, you could conceivably expand into a multi-family home or buy another home in the area and start organically creating a new gayborhood. Zoning issues would also be a factor; I suspect every successful gayborhood is mixed-use. If you want to codify and build gayborhoods I bet a lot of them started out as queer people hanging out in public parks or sidewalks before the criminalization of public space took place. I also want to shout out queer-adjacent conventions. Conventions are places where social norms don't entirely apply. They chart out different possibilities for organizing society, different ways to show worth rather than economic activity. They are not a model for living but they do show promising signs of collective action, mutual aid, and radical acceptance. With covid driving down rents, and a renewed political interest in land use, maybe now is the time for queers to reclaim downtown. Every city council is weaker than it seems. We see this now with all the successful book bannings and anti-queer actions taken up by the right wing. There aren't a lot of them, they just show up to every meeting. My local DSA is doing okay, but with 50 members at every council meeting we'd run the city. That's just .025% of the city. You mentioned buying out entire multi family buildings. I was really interested in doing something like this, and having a co-op or nonprofit structure to do it. I found that I didn't have anywhere near enough support to do it on my own. The entire land/home buying infrastructure in the US is built around buying a single family home as a sole or married owner. Landlords also exist here but have entirely different sets of rules, and have for-profit companies too. If you want a queer LLC or nonprofit to own a building, you need to spend 2-12 months ahead of time getting the paperwork in order. This probably will take some serious funding and research too since it's so uncommon. If we want to get serious about this concept we need an organization putting out handbooks and legal aid on how to do it. I liked what you said about tenant solidarity - this project cannot survive with just queers. Queer issues are human issues and vice versa. I wish you said kinky queers and polyamorous queers when you were talking about queers who don't fit into homonormativity. They don't want a marriage and a picket fence, what they want would melt the brains of a lot of "same love" libs, let alone the fascists. "Acceptance" of these minorities is conditional at best, and even queers themselves can talk down to them or ask them to move their activities somewhere else. What they fail to realize is that there's nowhere to go - capital has subsumed every public and Internet (FOSTA-SESTA) space, and when your own community says what you're doing is obscene, there's nowhere to turn. Your videos are really interesting and nobody is saying what you're saying. I look forward to your future work!
I loved in SF FROM 93 to 2016. The Castro was the gay neighborhood hub. Then eventually these neighborhood s were cleaned up and were safe, friendly and functioning, then the straights came in and bought the real estate for the 'safe' area. Just like in all the hottest gay dance clubs. We made them cool then the bridge and tunnels wanted to explore the city.
One of my adoptive family members was a drag queen. She was amazing, advocated for mental health, arranged awesome drag shows and art shows. When she moved out of state ALL that dropped and everyone dispersed and I haven't had a community since then. My towns currently taken over by extremely religious conservatives. We had a shooting at a bar which led it to being closed. We have nothing left in this town and it breaks my heart. And part of why I ended up looking up videos like this. I cannot stress how important community means to me as a trans autistic person. I no longer have safe spaces to go. I may also have to live because I can't afford a billion dollar loft. How can we fix this??? Im trying to make online spaces but we NEED physical ones.
I joined a political org that is fulfilling much of that function for me, and incidentally like 80% of my local branch is either queer or gender non-conforming.
Pretty interested in the idea that the rebellions that queer people participated in during the 70's were partially thanks to us being trapped in specific neighborhoods together. Where can I read more about this?
I move to Philly last year and almost never go to the gayborhood. I don’t drink, and it’s a trauma/panic attack super fun thing, so I feel like I don’t belong there, and during Pride I won’t get to spend it with my partner who (is super supportive) but is going to celebrate the way everyone does. I feel like this takes the celebration of Pride from me and leaves the fight, which I’m passionate about, but exhausted by. I helped start my small hometown Pride and it was wonderful for folk who don’t drink but want to party, and I miss that. Not pertinent to any but one line here, but I…may have wanted to vent 😅
@@radicalplanning Thanks! There are spaces, of course. Just a little vent as it can sting a bit when I celebrate largely without my folks about. But there is always room for more people in my life, so maybe it’s ab opportunity to make friends!
I want to thank you in general, I’m neurodivergent and I’ve always been able to express myself with color and fashion when I was a undiagnosed weird little girl, was my mask slipping off. I’m trying to approach fashion in a progressive, revolutionary and trasformative platform focusing on disability, minorities and ecology. This wave of leftist city planning on youtube have encourage me so so much. A big hug From italy
I feel like (mostly straight, not entirely) independent music scenes face similar circumstances to gayborhoods. Both face threats including gentrification, commercialization, “developer modernism” of sorts, turning places into shiny cookie cutter commodities and bleaching the character. It’s tough to get the fertile ground just right and stay that way. There’s a lot to the planning and preservation of scenes, and while gayborhood urbanism has had significant research done by academics, music scene urbanism hasn’t.
I feel like a lot of queer communities have moved online at this point. The centralization based on that helps a lot more than physical spaces can, at least when they're somewhere people have to move to or spend hours to get to. Its just we need to decentralize the means of these communities. I feel odd thinking about the way that conglomerates like Discord both have power over these queer spaces, but that generally the communities are still able to thrive at least until fascists or liberals raid them. The way that youtube lets this content exist, at least for the time. Its like there's some level of acceptable catching of radical leftists within mainstream spaces to attempt to appease them enough to get what money they have without threatening their hegemony. Not to say all queer spaces I'm in are radical leftist spaces. Also, I feel like making physical space for queer people is fundamentally different because we don't self reproduce like many other minorities do. Like you are relying on constant movement of people to a centralized place in order to facilitate a physical queer community. Queer spaces should be within walking distance for everyone. Even in my small town, since its a college town we have a queer group that is trying to serve the broader community and I feel like could if the reactionaries in the town weren't such a threat. We had our first pride last year and now I'm the only one that's able to keep that tradition going for a second year. But there clearly are enough queer people within pretty much any neighborhood that if we have towns that are facilitated for people, there will be enough of a way for queer community to thrive. Its what I keep saying about queer rights, queer people are different as a group because you can never single out all queer people and give them rights. We are distributed perfectly around the world. And because of that no amount of space in a large urban environment is enough. Queer people anywhere will not be liberated until queer people everywhere are.
What do you think of displacement of LGBT by groups within it like boystown not being gay but lesbian instead? I mainly see gay spaces on discord now n
Hey, great video. Happy Pride to you ! Thanks for making this one a bit more personal. Yeah, I'd been wondering if the cute urban planner Bear was gay :o) Always lots of good info - thanks for your work, and putting the effort into your channel. I look forward to more. 🌈🧡
thanks for the video! helped me orient some of my thoughts for an essay im writing. there have been some really interesting articles analyzing what makes queer spaces in the last 20 years, acknowleding the liberatory struggle at the center of queer identity. it would be interesting to see how you would reflect on that.
Nightclubs have always served as a third place for queer people. Discourse around community party infrastructure is something that's lacking in leftist urban planning discourse.
guys isn't it just fine to mix with straight people? why clustering? when that was an actual need it was ok, but it's been an organic disaggregation hasn't it?
@@ThickieComradeactually it doesn't, coul you explain better? it's not fine to mix with homophobic people, which is a little bit different as a concept
Assimilation with your oppressors when so many queers struggle to survive is never the answer. Liberation vs assimilation. It's a tale as old as time, it's why queers still struggle to exist today.
It's not that there's anything wrong with mixing with straight people (and in small towns and cities worldwide we're particularly likely to do just that) - it's more that being with other LGBTQIA+ people is a need in itself, and gaybourhoods honour that need, albeit sometimes in imperfect ways (e.g. poor disability access, the loss of lesbian bars, a lack of sober spaces, etc.). If you live somewhere in which the wider population are all relaxed about queer people holding hands or kissing in public, or about visibly trans people, or queer parenting, then that's great and that's what we're all aiming for, but that level of progress is far from universal, and even where it exists, it can be fragile.
Been talking to homies lately (both queer and not) about how few public spaces are 1) unpoliced, 2) accessible to those without money and 3) non-heteronormative. Thank you for this!
How tf is a space aupposed to be " non-heteronomative". Its called normal.
@@RK-cj4oc I'm sure you'd very much like to be considered normal. Maybe one day! Good luck
Hi. I’m 53, gay, came of age during the AIDS crisis. I remember 12-inch Dance Records, The Coffee Stop - full of Keith Haring art, Lambda Rising, and oh so much more about Dupont Circle of the 1980s to the early part of the 2000s. In 1993, i helped found the first iteration of NoVA Pride, and learned of Dulles Triangles, a gay/lesbian social group in Reston, Virginia. Reston felt very far away from me. I’ve lived in Reston for 20 years now, and Triangles have come to be my queer community. So even in the suburbs, we carry on, creating our own spaces, same as it ever was. Sigh.
BIDs gives a name to something I didn’t have a name for, and it’s what felt off to me about living in Boystown in Chicago and honestly, what feels off about all of Chicago to me. All the modernism and and leftism that I thought I was going to get when moving to a gayborhood in a big city in a blue state (away from the gay friendliest mid-sized city in a red state) was completely deflated by how all of it is just about places where you can buy things, and places where tourists can buy things. The people who were left out were right in my face there too, because a lot of homeless trans teens (mostly Black people) slept on the ground outside of my apartment. The Northalsted Business Alliance is notoriously hostile towards them, it’s not uncommon for the actual lefties in the neighborhood to talk about black people being followed all around the store if they enter one of the Alliance-member businesses.
I couldn’t stand the place. It felt like I’d gotten to the supposed promised land of queerness only to find out that the promise was that I would have every opportunity to be just as much of a good capitalist as any other white person in America.
This is an intersection I've been waiting for: leftist, gay, and urban planning. I've not usually seen these three talking together even though I know it's happened. It's part of myself I've wanted to knit together, and it really helps to see how others do it to get ideas. Leftists until recently wanted nothing to do with the queers, and new urbanism, while promising in some ways, I've noticed has long been rather focused on the creative classes and not really talking enough to low income, blue collar, or working class people like myself.
Neoliberalism and its very successful campaign against socialism has really robbed urbanists and many queers of a way to talk meaningfully about so many issues. I remember the pervasive belief in the 1990s that America was a classless society and never really buying it because I grew up with so much evidence to the contrary. It's hard to stand up to grown ups as a kid when you know something in their explanations seems wrong and you know that you're young and inexperienced. Obviously class isn't the only piece of the puzzle, but it often is a big one, and these libertarian types and free market fundamentalists tie themselves in knots trying to get around the issue of class.
Another thing homonormativity makes me think of is the understandable reaction about a set way of being gay. Not all of us conform to it, but I've come to appreciate that there is much value in having a uniquely queer identity. The problem with being a melting pot is that it tends to homogenize everything; it files down the hard edges that make various identities unique. Additionally, I've noticed that encouragement to be part of the melting pot usually comes from the top, encouraging people on the bottom the surrender certain things to fit in better that otherwise can't easily be assimilated. It isn't neutral. Being different isn't something you should have to apologize for. I got way more thoughts on this, but it's outside the topic of urbanism. I'm glad to see something like this finally online. Thanks!
youre so charming! it's such a relief to have someone else talking about these niche planning/urban concepts that i've exhausted my friends and coworkers with LOL
I feel like your the first person I've ever seen who really reminds me of myself. I too am a cis gender masculine passing white bisexual male. I don't know if I've ever seen anyone in my life who i felt more in common with than you. Thanks for being visible and letting me know I'm not alone. and thanks for your content and another great video.
I'm so stoked to have found you. I'm a rural poor white, turned city hybrid, autistic trans gay. Though I'm in the college neighborhood of this metropolis, probably the most accepting of any form of eccentricity, I'm not out as autistic in person, I'm generally not out as trans either. But I'm 35 and unwired my colonizer psyche and am itching to help build a renter's union and need so much research. Stoked to have found a soft spoken and engaging person to spend time learning from. Stay regulated 🍉✌️
Thank you so much! Not sure if you watched my most recent video or not, but I recommend the book “Abolish Rent” if you’re interested in tenants unions.
@radicalplanning Added to my list! 🍉✌️
I screamed when you did a close up of Richard’s shoes, LMAO. Appreciate the knowledge you dropped here
You look so cute and good with this black shirt honestly❤️❤️❤️ (struggling fashion student) This video is amazing, informative and really eye opening, thank you
Cute red beard
This channel is simply fantastic! Although I'm not really familiar with theoretical concepts in geography and urbanism, I think I can follow and appreciate most of your points. I am learning so much from it! Greetings from Brazil!
Build community land trusts!
Here's how immigrant communities are building dual power in neighborhoods:
Rizal says the Bhutanese and Nepali families are very close and typically live in one house together. They often share their income until they can afford to buy a home and a car. He says they are usually hesitant to take out loans from banks and regularly loan each other money so they don't have to pay interest.
"Our community is so much united," he says. "We work. For example, if you have a family of six people and they all work and they make $1,500 a month, they stay together in the same house. So six times $1,500 is $9,000 coming a month. They will spend only $2,000 for expenditures. In a year, they buy a house."
He adds, "So then they buy one house with one brother. They work again together, make that money, buy another house. By six years they'll buy six houses. Easily. They don't bother to [get a] loan from the bank."
Great writeup. The BID in New Orleans is a weird one, because while the French Quarter may be the largest concentration of queer residences/businesses, it's also home to a LOT of other historical communities, and the Downtown Development District covers not just the French Quarter but also the Central Business District to act as an entity that handles the vast majority of tourism dollars. Also the DDD doesn't do any sort of branding for the queer area of Bourbon, the individual bars mostly take it upon themselves. There's a smaller area outside of the French Quarter in the Marigny that has been developing over the last couple of decades
As a straight white cis man, this video seemed extremely informative to me. Like, obviously neoliberalism sucks, but I did t really realize that gayborhoods were dispersing or that neoliberalism was to blame. I guess because so many neighborhoods that I enjoy fly rainbow flags and since I'm not super integrated to the gay community it seemed fine. I've always been a little critical of bougie neighborhoods that have black lives matter and pro trans/gay/any other marginalized group since it seems a bit like virtue signaling where affluent (mostly) whites are supportive in voice only. Still, I guess I never realized how these things can create such a facade for gayborhoods and give a friendly face to gentrification of gayborhoods in particular.
Watching the original American Queer As Folk is so alien to me. It’s about a group of queer friends and takes place in a gayborhood in Pittsburg, liberty street. Gay diners, streets lined with gay bars, gay community centers, complex queer community, the whole package really (admittedly very white tho). When a lesbian couple moves to the wealthy white area to raise their kid, everyone pokes fun of them. Seemed like heaven to 15 year old me living in one of the most unfriendly countries for queer people.
Ah! A queer urbanist. Theres so many tbh, but still love to see more of us ❤️. I want to live in a gayborhood. I love that I discovered your channel its amazing I hope it grows because you deserve it!
Loved the video. I've talked with other fringe queers about the respectability politics of queers, but "homonormativity" wraps it up in a bow, and has some academic research behind it, so I'll probably start using it.
The Lisa Duggan quote about the queer sedative is so true. I think it's true of the liberal politics of my entire life. Only recently has leftism cracked back into the mainstream and dragged the corpse of the Democratic party along for the ride.
I like how you said "Straight-majority places where straight-owned businesses fly rainbow flags." The disconnect between pride month libs and the utter silence on the ongoing trans genocide is something to behold.
We were taught MLK and women's rights. The lesson from those was that you peacefully protest for legal recognition, you get it, and then everything is fine forever. Curiously left out of these lessons are modern examples of the Black wealth gap or ongoing sexual harassment. Or the nonpeaceful actions that helped those movements achieve their goals. Or the implication that every minority group has to "go through" a period of majority intolerance - we see this now with trans people, under-18s with no say in politics, polyamorous people, kinksters, etc.
The "homonormative beliefs" page was 50% good and 50% non-sequiter for me. Liberation doesn't start or end with Target selling pride merch, but it's probably better than them not selling it. I don't think queers have internalized straight neighborhoods as better than gay neighborhoods because as you've said, there basically aren't gay neighborhoods anymore. For that to be a belief, the choice would have to be offered. I do agree that queers police other queer expression way too much. The "born this way" and "same love" thing was a helpful branding exercise ahead of marriage legalization, but further research has been really out of the public eye.
Solving this is beyond me but I do have some ideas that might orient us towards gayborhoods once again. Sadly, they are also aligned with capital. Greater thinkers than me who are in the field rather than watching RUclips videos about it might have to chime in.
The most successful queer living I've seen so far is queer group homes. That's majority-queer living under one roof, run democratically. Spreading that requires rich queers, possibly in the tech sector and working remotely to have access to the national real estate market. If one group home is successful and the social network is large enough, you could conceivably expand into a multi-family home or buy another home in the area and start organically creating a new gayborhood. Zoning issues would also be a factor; I suspect every successful gayborhood is mixed-use. If you want to codify and build gayborhoods I bet a lot of them started out as queer people hanging out in public parks or sidewalks before the criminalization of public space took place.
I also want to shout out queer-adjacent conventions. Conventions are places where social norms don't entirely apply. They chart out different possibilities for organizing society, different ways to show worth rather than economic activity. They are not a model for living but they do show promising signs of collective action, mutual aid, and radical acceptance.
With covid driving down rents, and a renewed political interest in land use, maybe now is the time for queers to reclaim downtown. Every city council is weaker than it seems. We see this now with all the successful book bannings and anti-queer actions taken up by the right wing. There aren't a lot of them, they just show up to every meeting. My local DSA is doing okay, but with 50 members at every council meeting we'd run the city. That's just .025% of the city.
You mentioned buying out entire multi family buildings. I was really interested in doing something like this, and having a co-op or nonprofit structure to do it. I found that I didn't have anywhere near enough support to do it on my own. The entire land/home buying infrastructure in the US is built around buying a single family home as a sole or married owner. Landlords also exist here but have entirely different sets of rules, and have for-profit companies too. If you want a queer LLC or nonprofit to own a building, you need to spend 2-12 months ahead of time getting the paperwork in order. This probably will take some serious funding and research too since it's so uncommon. If we want to get serious about this concept we need an organization putting out handbooks and legal aid on how to do it.
I liked what you said about tenant solidarity - this project cannot survive with just queers. Queer issues are human issues and vice versa.
I wish you said kinky queers and polyamorous queers when you were talking about queers who don't fit into homonormativity. They don't want a marriage and a picket fence, what they want would melt the brains of a lot of "same love" libs, let alone the fascists. "Acceptance" of these minorities is conditional at best, and even queers themselves can talk down to them or ask them to move their activities somewhere else. What they fail to realize is that there's nowhere to go - capital has subsumed every public and Internet (FOSTA-SESTA) space, and when your own community says what you're doing is obscene, there's nowhere to turn.
Your videos are really interesting and nobody is saying what you're saying. I look forward to your future work!
I loved in SF FROM 93 to 2016. The Castro was the gay neighborhood hub. Then eventually these neighborhood s were cleaned up and were safe, friendly and functioning, then the straights came in and bought the real estate for the 'safe' area. Just like in all the hottest gay dance clubs. We made them cool then the bridge and tunnels wanted to explore the city.
Really educational video about a few issues I didn't realize were so connected.
One of my adoptive family members was a drag queen. She was amazing, advocated for mental health, arranged awesome drag shows and art shows. When she moved out of state ALL that dropped and everyone dispersed and I haven't had a community since then. My towns currently taken over by extremely religious conservatives. We had a shooting at a bar which led it to being closed. We have nothing left in this town and it breaks my heart. And part of why I ended up looking up videos like this. I cannot stress how important community means to me as a trans autistic person. I no longer have safe spaces to go. I may also have to live because I can't afford a billion dollar loft. How can we fix this??? Im trying to make online spaces but we NEED physical ones.
I joined a political org that is fulfilling much of that function for me, and incidentally like 80% of my local branch is either queer or gender non-conforming.
Pretty interested in the idea that the rebellions that queer people participated in during the 70's were partially thanks to us being trapped in specific neighborhoods together. Where can I read more about this?
I move to Philly last year and almost never go to the gayborhood. I don’t drink, and it’s a trauma/panic attack super fun thing, so I feel like I don’t belong there, and during Pride I won’t get to spend it with my partner who (is super supportive) but is going to celebrate the way everyone does. I feel like this takes the celebration of Pride from me and leaves the fight, which I’m passionate about, but exhausted by.
I helped start my small hometown Pride and it was wonderful for folk who don’t drink but want to party, and I miss that.
Not pertinent to any but one line here, but I…may have wanted to vent 😅
we need more queer sober spaces. im sorry that you feel excluded from pride :(
@@radicalplanning Thanks! There are spaces, of course. Just a little vent as it can sting a bit when I celebrate largely without my folks about. But there is always room for more people in my life, so maybe it’s ab opportunity to make friends!
Very insightful - really coming to look forward to your videos. Happy pride month 🏳️🌈❤
What would you say about the health of Capitol Hill in Denver?
I want to thank you in general, I’m neurodivergent and I’ve always been able to express myself with color and fashion when I was a undiagnosed weird little girl, was my mask slipping off. I’m trying to approach fashion in a progressive, revolutionary and trasformative platform focusing on disability, minorities and ecology. This wave of leftist city planning on youtube have encourage me so so much. A big hug From italy
*way to create a platform
I feel like (mostly straight, not entirely) independent music scenes face similar circumstances to gayborhoods. Both face threats including gentrification, commercialization, “developer modernism” of sorts, turning places into shiny cookie cutter commodities and bleaching the character. It’s tough to get the fertile ground just right and stay that way. There’s a lot to the planning and preservation of scenes, and while gayborhood urbanism has had significant research done by academics, music scene urbanism hasn’t.
Great video, and happy pride! Made me think of the good and bad aspects of modern gay villages here in the UK
I feel like a lot of queer communities have moved online at this point. The centralization based on that helps a lot more than physical spaces can, at least when they're somewhere people have to move to or spend hours to get to. Its just we need to decentralize the means of these communities. I feel odd thinking about the way that conglomerates like Discord both have power over these queer spaces, but that generally the communities are still able to thrive at least until fascists or liberals raid them. The way that youtube lets this content exist, at least for the time. Its like there's some level of acceptable catching of radical leftists within mainstream spaces to attempt to appease them enough to get what money they have without threatening their hegemony. Not to say all queer spaces I'm in are radical leftist spaces.
Also, I feel like making physical space for queer people is fundamentally different because we don't self reproduce like many other minorities do. Like you are relying on constant movement of people to a centralized place in order to facilitate a physical queer community. Queer spaces should be within walking distance for everyone. Even in my small town, since its a college town we have a queer group that is trying to serve the broader community and I feel like could if the reactionaries in the town weren't such a threat. We had our first pride last year and now I'm the only one that's able to keep that tradition going for a second year. But there clearly are enough queer people within pretty much any neighborhood that if we have towns that are facilitated for people, there will be enough of a way for queer community to thrive. Its what I keep saying about queer rights, queer people are different as a group because you can never single out all queer people and give them rights. We are distributed perfectly around the world. And because of that no amount of space in a large urban environment is enough. Queer people anywhere will not be liberated until queer people everywhere are.
What do you think of displacement of LGBT by groups within it like boystown not being gay but lesbian instead? I mainly see gay spaces on discord now n
i did not know there was a lesbian takeover of boystown but if that’s the case then hell yeah
Hey, great video. Happy Pride to you ! Thanks for making this one a bit more personal. Yeah, I'd been wondering if the cute urban planner Bear was gay :o) Always lots of good info - thanks for your work, and putting the effort into your channel. I look forward to more. 🌈🧡
thanks for the video! helped me orient some of my thoughts for an essay im writing. there have been some really interesting articles analyzing what makes queer spaces in the last 20 years, acknowleding the liberatory struggle at the center of queer identity. it would be interesting to see how you would reflect on that.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
6/5.
5/5 for content and the extra point for belly 👌
Amazing video! If saddening
I am interacting with the content, but like in a gay way
Nightclubs have always served as a third place for queer people. Discourse around community party infrastructure is something that's lacking in leftist urban planning discourse.
ur videos are so wonderful, they go into such depth on these niche topics that need to be talked about by more socialists
Preach!
Im actually writing my honours on this :)
🥰
Good
Great video, big up the bi babies
Gosh, this video was so gay!
guys isn't it just fine to mix with straight people? why clustering? when that was an actual need it was ok, but it's been an organic disaggregation hasn't it?
It's actually not fine to mix with straight people, hope this helps.
@@ThickieComradeactually it doesn't, coul you explain better? it's not fine to mix with homophobic people, which is a little bit different as a concept
Assimilation with your oppressors when so many queers struggle to survive is never the answer. Liberation vs assimilation. It's a tale as old as time, it's why queers still struggle to exist today.
@@ThickieComrade idk i don’t feel oppressed by my straight neighbors, i barely even know their names
It's not that there's anything wrong with mixing with straight people (and in small towns and cities worldwide we're particularly likely to do just that) - it's more that being with other LGBTQIA+ people is a need in itself, and gaybourhoods honour that need, albeit sometimes in imperfect ways (e.g. poor disability access, the loss of lesbian bars, a lack of sober spaces, etc.). If you live somewhere in which the wider population are all relaxed about queer people holding hands or kissing in public, or about visibly trans people, or queer parenting, then that's great and that's what we're all aiming for, but that level of progress is far from universal, and even where it exists, it can be fragile.
I think you should ask yourself why gay exceptance is in retreat after so much progress.