Towards the ‘gaying’ of public space: Putting the politics into the public and the sexual into space

This paper explores the physical, spatial and ideological construction of urban public space with reference to some key conference themes of activism, oppression, liberation and the politics of identity for gay people.   In discussions of public space (with notable exceptions, see Iveson 2000, Watson 2006, Valentine 2004) little attention is given to the role of public space in both contributing to and constraining the liberation and expression of being gay (in all the range of orientations encompassed by the term ‘gay’), see further, White 1998, 2005, Malone 2003, Sercombe 2006).   This is a considerable omission in the growing body of research on public space and its various uses and users and this paper attempts to address this deficit by posing the question of whether urban public space is both ‘gendered’ (Massey 1994,1999) and heterosexual in its governance, design, ordering, surveillance, signage and street furniture (Iveson 2009, 2011).   Critical consideration of these and other questions contribute to an extension of notions of ‘Queer Friendly Neighbourhoods’ (Knox and Pinch 2006) that will construct ‘gay’ as more than ‘gentrification’ or lifestyle economics (Atkinson and Easthope 2009).