Vancouver( As Queer)Scape: Strategies for Mapping Public Spaces Constructed by Sexual Minorities
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August 10, 1997 Critical Geography Conference, Simon Fraser University & The University of British Columbia, Session: Locating the politics of theory in critical human geography Gordon Brent Ingram, Ph.D.1 Anne-Marie Bouthillette, M.A. & Cornelia Wyngaarden Vancouver( as queer)scape: Strategies for mapping public spaces constructed by sexual minorities 0 Introduction: Towards activist theories of placemaking by sexual minorities It is a great pleasure for our group to present in this theoretical discussion -- thanks to the organizers of this conference for their long-term commitments to constructing such "space" of activist theory. We am going to use the personal pronoun through much of this presentation because while this material represents the research and theoretical work of three individuals, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, Cornelia Wyngaarden, and myself in an upcoming book, "Vancouver( as queer)scape: The construction of public space by sexual minorities in Pacific Canada," the framing of the questions that We pose and begin to answer in this presentation are my own. "Vancouver( as queer)scape" represents a dialogue between a geographer -- Bouthillette, a public artist -- Wyngaarden, and myself -- an environmental planner. Much of this presentation, here at the Critical Geography Conference, is focused on the part of a more specific discourse that is most contentious and fertile in terms of theory and practice -- and one that is most compelling to me: the continuing gaps between studies of space, as in the field of geography, and decision-making involving physical space, what is often called "environmental design" or "environmental planning." Another of the underlying functions of this presentation, today, is to explore how environmental planners and designers may increasingly want to declare themselves one of the numerous stakeholder groups in critical geography. Perhaps more than most geography-related fields environment planning needs critical geography because today it too often is used to obscure social conflict and the experiences of marginalized social groups. In my work -- often focused on planning networks of "open" space and protected areas involving social groups marginalized in various ways, the reality is that We am often involved in as much if not more with geographical studies than environmental decision- making. But these unresolved distinctions are not just about the work contexts of activist scholars. Rather, those invisible lines between geography and planning have great bearings both on how and why studies are conducted and how and why decisions are made. As many 1 This paper was a collaborative effort of Ingram, Bouthillette and Wygaarden but was presented by Ingram. Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, & Cornelia Wyngaarden Vancouver( as queer)scape: Strategies for mapping public spaces constructed by sexual minorities Critical Geography Conference (Simon Fraser University & The University of British Columbia), Session: Locating the politics of theory in critical human geography, August 10, 1997 of us too painfully know, decisions about human communities and environments are often made before studies are ever initiated. To reduce much of the loss of clarity between study and intervention to the vagaries of power, as has been fashionable with some of the more reductive interpretations of Foucaultian pouvoir , is to forsake important opportunities to link knowledge of domination of space and people in new ways that can more authentically, to invoke that now discredited term, "empower," local communities and, in particular, page 2 marginalized social groups. Few chasms between geographical studies and environmental decision-making are wider and more chaotic, in terms of both theory and instrumentality, as between sexuality and space. Mappings involving the dissonant identities, milieus, and stakeholders that make up the notion of sexual minorities, "queers," and specific alliances of lesbians, gay men, bisexual, and transgendered people are rarely linked with questions in environmental design whether they be for broader metropolitan and neighbourhood scales or those of sites including singular buildings, monuments, rooms, and closets. Most of the older arguments that practitioners of marginalized sexualities were too "deterritorialized" to have any specific impacts, as related to either their desires or the state hostility to them, have long be discredited. Yet there remains this huge gap between mapping and decision-making and perhaps more problematically between activism and instrumentality vis-à-vis environmental design. In this presentation, We cloak the first more rhetorical discussion, of the heavily constructed yet unstable division of the spoils between geography and environmental design and planning in one of better mapping the dynamic spaces and impacts of marginalized sexualities in Vancouver. My underlying argument is that a "queerscape" -- larger than a community and smaller and more grounded with less pretentious than any sort of singular "Queer Nation" or planet -- necessarily reconstructs itself and in this way links cognitive maps, that are often at the core of studies in human geography, with activistic design and planning through day-to-day mediation of both desire and homophobia. Not coincidentally, both cognitive mapping and sexual "aesthetics" have been marginalized in "scholarly" geography and the environmental design "professions" respectively. While the queerscape as a plane of mediation between desire and both repression and alienation is a relatively simple idea, and one that has been postulated in various ways for years, the opportunities for both critiques and reconsideration of "postmodern geographies," with its residual patterns of marginalization, still are largely unexplored. Why bother trying to better connect cognitive mapping and to some kind of Debordian notion of environmental planning as dialogue? First of all, the ideal fraught with naívety may be one of the most important rallying cries for defining new democratic vistas over the next decade. But rather than inherently liberatory, the uses of better connecting cognitive mapping to environmental design, as related to eroticism, are myriad as are the contexts. We base this discussion on our work in Vancouver and on its volatile and perennially contentious system of public places -- both outdoor and indoor. While some have argued, perhaps prematurely, that the nineteen nineties amalgam of "queer" politics indicates a decline in identity politics, in relatively affluent and liberal cities such as Vancouver, there has been a net increase in sexual minorities-identified stakeholders for particular "public" spaces. We explore this paradox, one suggesting the emergence of has been playfully called "queerscape architecture" , for central Vancouver. In some ways, homophobia as a social-environmental problem is on the decline in central Vancouver but this is just freeing up opportunities for the production Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, & Cornelia Wyngaarden Vancouver( as queer)scape: Strategies for mapping public spaces constructed by sexual minorities Critical Geography Conference (Simon Fraser University & The University of British Columbia), Session: Locating the politics of theory in critical human geography, August 10, 1997 and diversification of queer space -- much of which is not always segregated in any fixed terms. In fact, the vaguely outlaw but decidedly commercial institutions that pushed open homoerotic space in Vancouver in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies have transformed themselves into generators of sexual disorientation that is less focused on servicing more stable erotic alien( n)ations. But in any periods of expanded opportunities, there is a race that can only be partially explained through early twentieth century totalities page 3 such as "socialism or barbarism." Today, there are even more unstable dichotomies such as between kitsch gay and lesbian capitalism and bland, bureaucratic service organizations and a would-be and only somewhat queer "shadow state" -- queer careerism with a vaguely human face. There are dichotomies between essentialized and perpetually destabilizing identifications. There are even resurgences of tensions between eros and family. And in cities like Vancouver, all of these contests involve decisions over where people live, work, and play. In exploring new means to link cognitive mapping with environmental design, around a heightened acknowledgement and an interrogated "programming" for "democracy" in sexual expression -- an illusive ideal in this century, We make a series of arguments that roughly correspond to the progression of sections of this presentation. 1. divergent uses of cognitive maps - We break with the Jamesonian optimism around cognitive mapping as part of postmodernist efforts for new social democracy. Today, there are too numerous and divergent uses of cognitive maps. The assertion and "sharing" of cognitive maps, especially for a marginalized group, is never without a price -- and never without some level of social voyeurism. Today we are constantly pelted with information for the construction of competing cognitive maps with those more squarely in the service of "capital" often winning. 2. site and city specificities - We go on to argue that the particular marginalizations of (homo)sexualities, from which arose the "identity politics" that emerged in mid-century, is not only the product of capitalism, colonialism, and tensions