Social and cultural geography: gay geographies

In past centuries, extreme prejudice and repression

meant that gay life was restricted to only the largest

cities, and to clandestine networks of private and public

spaces which were largely unknown to ‘straight’ society.

However, the urbanization process of the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries, and the social and legal reforms of

the late 1960s onward, have allowed spaces which are

much more visibly oriented to the gay community to

develop. These spaces have now become an increasingly

common feature within the inner areas of medium-sized

and larger cities of North America, Europe and Australasia,

as well as the largest cities of South America and

Asia.