Transformations in LGBT consumer landscapes and leisure spaces in the neoliberal city

Andrew Gorman‐Murray · Catherine J. Nash

49 citations0/0 files storedUrban Studies

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Night-time city culture Urban Planning and Governance Urban and sociocultural dynamics

Abstract

This paper examines recent transformations in consumer landscapes and leisure spaces in inner-city LGBT neighbourhoods in Sydney, Australia and Toronto, Canada. In doing so, we rethink orthodox positions on neoliberalism and homonormativity by considering practices of sociability and commensality. We contend that closer attention to interactions between mainstream and LGBT consumers is key to understanding these urban changes. Mainstream-LGBT interactions encompass both congruent and competing practices, actualised in both physical encounters in consumer landscapes and discursive reputations of those spaces. These relations are increasingly important owing to the progressive integration of LGBT neighbourhoods into urban cultures and economies. Simultaneously, the materialisation of diverse LGBT landscapes in Sydney and Toronto has generated a relational geography of ‘traditional’ gay villages and ‘emergent’ queer-friendly neighbourhoods. We argue that practices and spaces of leisure-based consumption are emerging in different forms across these neighbourhoods and between Sydney and Toronto. To illustrate this, we deploy a discourse analysis of mainstream newspaper articles on LGBT neighbourhoods over 2004–2014, supplemented by relevant LGBT press releases in Toronto, focusing on the use, meaning and social significance of leisure-based consumption sites – clubs, bars, cafés, restaurants. We find the balance of daytime/night-time leisure spaces, which have both social and material affordances, is a key discriminator across the neighbourhoods, both within and between the cities. Daytime consumer landscapes are more often framed as sociable and inclusive within the media, while night-time landscapes are perceived as divisive.

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References

2003The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life 2004The twilight of equality?: neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the attack on democracy 1995Mapping desire: geographies of sexualities 2010Urban tourism research: Recent progress and current paradoxes 1984Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 2005Desiring Sameness? The Rise of a Neoliberal Politics of Normalisation 2004Authenticating Queer Space: Citizenship, Urbanism and Governance 2010There Goes the Gayborhood?

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2018Still getting it on online: Thirty years of queer male spaces brokered through digital technologies 2021Let’s (not) Go Outside: Grindr, Hybrid Space, and Digital Queer Neighborhoods 2019Queer Pop–Ups: A Cultural Innovation in Urban Life 2021The Life and Afterlife of Gay Neighborhoods 2020“No queers out there”? Metronormativity and the queer suburban

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