Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
such districts for the practice of their trade,
although not necessarily for their residences. In the
moral geographies of the city, vice areas are at the
lowest point of the scale. A different kind of moral
geography has emerged with the greater
willingness of sections of society with different
sexual proclivities to become visible. Gays and
lesbians form minority groups that are regarded as
deviant by the dominant society.
Forest (1995) studied the West Hollywood
district of Los Angeles as an example of a place
with a gay identity. His focus was on portrayals of
the gay community in the press and, in particular,
the attempts by the gay press to link sexual
meanings to particular places and thus represent
gay minorities in ways similar to ethnic minorities.
This concept of diversity and the rights of
minorities to occupy specific spaces combats the
older image of exclusion or the need to confine
'perverts' and moral failures to excluded places.
This perspective suggests that place has a key role
in allowing minorities to resist domination: there
is some shift from constraint and exclusion to
choice and recognition. Places where gays and
lesbians are accepted become places where they
are empowered, and the whole process of 'coming
out' is enabled in environments of this kind. Gay
territories play significant parts in the evolution
of gay identities and subcultures. In West
Hollywood, there are symbols of gay identity that
conform to the characteristics of many of its
inhabitants; place plays a fundamental role in the
creation of a 'normative ideal'. Valentine (1993a;
1993b) studied the space behaviour of lesbians in
British cities and revealed the difficulties faced by
this minority group in a society dominated by a
different form of sexuality.
Plate 30.2
A rescue mission in Vancouver's skid row.
The run-down areas of low-cost rooming houses in
North American cities are inhabited by the real
havenots in society. Many suffer from diseases such as
mental illness and alcoholism.
close family was available, both the community-
based facilities and the mentally ill were rejected.
New forms of spatial segregation arose through
neighbourhood resistance to facilities, from
planners' tendency to locate after-care facilities in
those inner city areas that showed least resistance,
and from the informal filtering or drift of mentally
ill people towards transient rented areas. The
mentally ill remain a class of outsiders, clustering
in inner city areas and strongly over-represented
among the homeless, the low-cost boarding
houses (Plate 30.2) and the prison population. As
Sibley (1992) argued, outsiders are those groups
that do not fit into dominant models of society
and are seen as 'polluting'. Such groups disturb
the homogeneity of a locality, and the common
reaction of a hostile community will be to expel
them and purify spaces.
There are other minorities, distinguished by
their sexuality, that have become visible inWestern
cities and rank as outsiders. Cities have always had
districts associated with the 'sex trade', which
carry euphemisms such as 'vice areas' and 'red-
light districts'. Generally, the attitude of society is
that if such activities are to be tolerated, they
should be confined to specific areas where they
can be controlled and monitored; districts such as
London's Soho and the red-light district of
Amsterdam are outcomes of this process. The
professionals of the sex industry are confined to
LANDSCAPES OF PRIVILEGE
The most commonly cited examples of
segregation and discrimination focus on the
disadvantaged, but at the other ends of the social
status spectrum are the landscapes of privilege,
where the wealthy establish their residential
spaces. Places such as Beverly Hills, Hampstead
