Big city gaybourhoods: where they come from and why they still matter

In London, there is Soho; in New York, Chelsea and Greenwich Village; and in San Francisco, there is the Castro. In Sydney, there is Darlinghurst and, more specifically, Oxford Street. These are neighbourhoods of large cities that have, since at least the 1950s and often earlier, developed a reputation as queer spaces. In more recent years, those reputations have begun to fade and the enduring meanings of the "gaybourhood" have come into question. But what each of these places represents is the centrality of urban space to the emergence of visible, "out and proud" lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer identities and communities.