ABSTRACT

This chapter examines how lesbian urban geographies are currently being transformed through a comparative analysis of contemporary lesbian place-making activities in Sydney, Australia and Toronto, Canada. Geographical scholarship in lesbian urban geographies demonstrates how lesbians and gay men have utilized urban locations in the Global North in distinctly different ways. Podmore's work makes clear, lesbians engagement in urban place-making and their relationship to the Village Gai highlights how gender mediates relationships with urban places, including sexual minority landscapes. Within mobilities approaches, scholars work to understand the ways in which mobilities and genders intersect, which is a complicated process given both are infused with meaning, power and contested understandings. In Toronto, the gay village continues to be central to gay political and social life, particularly around the delivery of social services. Remembering significant lesbian urban spaces provides important moorings for lesbian communities in the context of mobile lesbian geographies.