Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
families with children, lower rents, and more women living alone in non-family
households.
Ann Forsyth (
1997
) uses 1990 US Census tract data, as well as mailing lists and
local voting data, to identify two tracts in Northampton, Massachusetts as “housing
the majority of Northampton's lesbians.” She uses data from the tracts with greater
concentrations of lesbians to discuss a different question: do these tracts have
characteristics consistent with gentrification over time. She discusses the popu-
lation structure and homeownership changes within these two tracts since 1970 and
finds that, as expected with gentrification, these tracts increased in educational
levels and white collar workers (as did the entire state). Contradicting the hypo-
thesis that lesbian concentrations are associated with gentrification, however,
Forsyth finds that these two census tracts experienced decreases in homeownership
and increases in poverty. Because Forsyth's study uses 1990 data to identify census
tracts with greater concentrations of lesbian residents, the study cannot tell us
whether the 1990 concentrations of lesbians in these neighborhoods
occurred
after 1970 in response to changes in these characteristics or whether these
characteristics of the neighborhood changed subsequent to the neighborhoods
having a greater concentration of lesbians in 1970.
Hayslett and Kane (
2011
) provide a more formal statistical study of intra-city
locations. They investigate the correlation between the neighborhood concen-
trations of lesbian and gay partnered households in Columbus, Ohio in 2000 and
the characteristics of the neighborhoods in the same year. They find evidence that
lesbians are less spatially concentrated than gay men, although there is statistically
significant positive spatial autocorrelation in their locations. They further show that
while gay men are concentrated in neighborhoods with fewer family households
and college graduates and with more renters, lesbian households are concentrated in
neighborhoods with more family households and more foreign born residents. Both
gay men and lesbians are more concentrated in neighborhoods with newer housing
and with more multi-family units. Because the data are for one city and use only
one year (2000 Census data) to identify gay spatial concentrations, the results can
neither be generalized nor used to parse the causes and effects of concentrations of
gay residents for the city studied.
Because they do not analyze the relationship of conditions within neighborhoods
prior to,
or
subsequent to,
changes in concentrations of gay men or lesbians, none of
these single-city studies can attribute these characteristics to be causes, effects, or
statistical correlates of other characteristics associated with the spatial concen-
tration of lesbians or gay men within cities. Furthermore, as these studies include
only a few U.S. cities, it is not clear whether the results apply more broadly. None of
the studies address the concentrations both of gay men and lesbians, although
Castells (
1983
) did argue that lesbians were less spatially concentrated.
The claim that gays are “pioneers” who move to declining central city
neighborhoods and reverse the fortunes of such neighborhoods is common in
discussions of the effects of gays' neighborhood concentrations (for example,
Castells
1983
; Lauria and Knopp
1985
). After tracing the development of a gay
enclave in Soho, London, Collins (
2004
) argues more generally that once
