Queering Urbanism

Insurgent Spaces in the Fight for Justice

By: Stathis G. Yeros

Narrated by: Kyla Garcia, Daniel Henning

Conflicts about space and access to resources have shaped queer histories from at least 1965 to the present. As spaces associated with middle-class homosexuality enter mainstream urbanity in the United States, cultural assimilation increasingly erases insurgent aspects of these social movements. This gentrification itself leads to queer displacement.

Combining urban history, architectural critique, and queer and trans theories, Queering Urbanism traces these phenomena through the history of a network of sites in the San Francisco Bay Area. Within that urban landscape, Stathis Yeros investigates how queer people appropriated existing spaces, how they expressed their distinct identities through aesthetic forms, and why they mobilized the language of citizenship to shape place and secure space. Here, the legacies of LGBTQ+ rights activism meet contemporary debates about the right to housing and urban life.

©2024 University of California Press (P)2024 Stathis G. Yeros