GENDER AND SPACE - LESBIANS AND GAY MEN IN THE CITY

The limited literature on the relationship of lesbians and gay men to urban space is ambiguous about the existence of lesbian spatial concentrations. We sought to establish the existence of spatial concentrations of lesbians and then to characterize the areas within which they were found in an urban area in the United States. We found that census tracts where lesbians concentrate had significantly lower levels of rents, proportions of owner-occupied housing, and traditional family households. The lesbian neighbourhood lacks the visibility of its gay male counterpart because lesbians have less access to capital with which to transform urban space and are more at risk in public places, rather than because of fundamental gender differences in how men and women relate to space and to urban politics.