The Myth of the Great White North

What Sexuality Is This Place? Building a Framework for Evaluating Sexualized Space: The Case of Kansas City, Missouri

“…Over the past decade or so, several authors have addressed the planning profession's past and current relationships to the LGBT population as an urban constituency (Adler & Brenner, 1992; Adler, Brenner, Frisch, Knopp, & Lauria, 2011; Bell & Binnie, 2004; Betsky, 1997; Browne, 2006a, 2006b; Chapman, 2011; Doan, 2007; Doan & Higgins, 2011; Dubrow, 2011; Florida, 2002; Forsyth, 2001, 2011; Knopp, 1990a; Lauria & Knopp, 1985), although there is a somewhat recent literature that focuses on rural areas, including places of worship (Albrecht, Campos, & Giusti, 2010; Gray, 2009; Halberstam, 2005; Herring, 2010; Howard, 1999; Packard, 2005). Obviously, planning has been interacting with issues of sexuality for decades, whether by promoting the heterosexual family through the design and provision of housing (Mumford, 1940), targeting heterosexual couples in tourism promotion (Forsyth, 2001, 2011), branding cities with the creative class argument in general (“regional economic growth is driven by the location choices of creative people”; Florida, 2002, p. 223) and with a tolerance for queers in particular (Chapman, 2011), branding cities with the sexual citizenship agenda (Bell & Binnie, 2004), or, more recently, targeting heterosexual singles through the promotion of formal entertainment zones (Campo & Ryan, 2008).…”