This article brings together work from across the fields of queer geographies, geographies of sexualities, and trans* geographies to consider the ways in which these fields offer important insights into the question of liminality. Queer and trans* approaches question presumptions about norms and being upon which many geographical understandings of liminality currently rely. I highlight queer and trans* approaches to the topic that unsettle existing binary constructs, and foreground an everyday lived, experiential realm of in-betweenness that brings new stakes into the currently conceptualized political dimensions of liminality. I seek to bring attention to queer and trans* work on liminality and propose that it is relevant to spatial theory and human geography more broadly.
This article offers a multiscalar, sociohistoric account of the spatial struggles of Toronto artists from 1970 until the present to secure affordable living and work space downtown that foregrounds the contemporary role of the cultural philanthropist‐developer. It argues that the cultural capital of artists to identify and embody authenticity facilitated temporary spatial claims that supported the development of a local art scene on Queen Street West, but one that became dependent upon, yet vulnerable to, the sociospatial unevenness of cultural philanthropy. Benevolence in arts and culture is not distributed evenly across time and space. Instead, as the case study of the 401 Richmond arts hub reveals, benevolence in its alliances with the real estate market and property development is concentrated in individualized commitments to particular neighborhoods, buildings, and local relationships, which temporally and operationally constrains its policy‐transforming potential.
The rapidly changing context of the pandemic offers an important opportunity to revisit what constitutes public space, for whom and how, given the coexisting practices of social distancing and social uprisings. This chapter explores the complexity of negotiations and practices currently involved in the production of space in Toronto, and calls for a further consideration of public space as a socially produced space which is articulated through socio-spatial practices, such as the fast-tracking of bike lanes and the provision of outdoor patio spaces for bars and restaurants.
This article explores forms of public space that have been rendered palpable during the Covid-19 pandemic: public spaces in high-rise buildings. We consider both physical and social public space in this context, thinking about the safety of both common areas and amenities in buildings and the emergence of new publics around the conditions of tower living during the pandemic (particularly focusing on tenant struggles). We determine that the planning, use, maintenance, and social production of public space in high-rise buildings are topics of increasing concern and urgency and that the presence of public space in the vertical built forms and lifestyles proliferating in urban regions complicates common understandings of public space. We argue that the questions raised by the pandemic call upon us to reconsider the meanings of public space.
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