Urban Sexualities

Sex and related questions of sexual reproduction and coupling have been an important focus for the social sciences since the 1960s and 1970s when sociologists, gay activists, and feminists first began to argue that sexuality is socially constructed, and not innate. The discipline of urban studies adds to such accounts by demonstrating that sexuality is also spatially constructed, with peoples’ sexual identities and desires influenced in various ways their upbringing, surroundings, and neighbourhood of residence in the city. Additionally, it brings to the fore the idea that cities offer more freedom than traditional rural communities in terms of possible sexual lifestyles, with larger cities exhibiting a diverse range of sexualized spaces (e.g., adult entertainment centers, sex clubs, gay bars, brothels) which act as the focus for sometimes niche sexual practices and identities. The way these different sexualities are made visible (or not) in the cityscape is revealing of the way these sexualities are regarded as either ‘normal’ or in some way ‘deviant.’ This noted, the study of sexuality in urban studies has generally been eclipsed by more traditional preoccupations with class and race. However, there has been gradual—if sometimes grudging—acknowledgment that questions of sex and sexuality matter when addressing the complexity of urban processes. This is most obvious in those studies of lesbian, gay, and bisexual life which have honed in on the importance of specific neighborhoods in LGBTQ life. Here studies of LGBTQ residence in a range of Western cities (notably San Francisco, New York, Berlin, Sydney, and Amsterdam, but also some smaller cities and towns including Provincetown, US and Hebden Bridgem UK) highlighted the importance of neighborhood spaces in the social, economic, and political life of those whose lives fall outside the heterosexual ‘norm.’ In time, the realization that many of these spaces of residence were also key sites of gentrification helped to bring the investigation of sexuality into dialogue with unfolding debates in urban and regional studies about the role of culture and lifestyle in driving processes of capital accumulation. Beyond the explication of changing LGBTQ residential geographies, ‘queer theory’ has also contributed to urban studies by foregrounding the importance of LGBTQ sexual identities and practices in processes such as global city migration, city branding, and urban tourism, engaging with debates on urban encounter, race, and gender in the process. Although still small in number, studies have also begun to explore the way that different heterosexualities are distributed across the public and private city, from the quiet spaces of suburbia to the ‘hot’ adult entertainment districts where varied—and sometimes criminalized—sexual pleasures can be bought and sold. In all of this there is an increasing focus on the mediated nature of sexuality, based on the understanding that urban sexual encounters and relationships are often arranged or conducted in the online realm via dating apps and platform technologies.