Still, all of the women I talked to affirmed the spatial significance of the lesbian 'community' of Park Slope. Rothenberg (1995: 173) But it's interesting because we [lesbians and queer women] all talk about Park Slope as this sort of Shangri-La of lesbian safety. ... I guess it doesn't really matter, I suppose, because if people feel like something's a lesbian neighbourhood, than by dint of their believing it, it is. Sarah '85 (age 41) The lesbian or lesbian-queer neighbourhood is a slippery

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... dea, and for many women throughout the world it is an elusive ideal, even in LGBTQ meccas such as San Francisco, London, Berlin, and New York City. Renowned enclaves such as the Castro district, Soho, Schöneberg, West Village, Lower East Side, and Chelsea developed as cities within cities, where LGBTQ people could safely find one another and build communities together. But practices of territory-making and place-claiming are antithetical to women's economic and social abilities in the urban sphere, and the urban is a historically unwelcoming environment for women. I suggest, then, that lesbianqueer neighbourhoods, then, do not work in ways identical to gay and queer men's neighbourhoods, but, as Tamar Rothenberg's quote reveals, they are still spatialised 'communities'. As Sarah, a participant from my research, describes in the quote above, the Park Slope neighbourhood in Brooklyn is produced as lesbian-queer in the way it affords these women safety and refuge. So what then is a lesbian-queer neighbourhood to lesbians and queer women? What does it afford them in their everyday lives? Dynamics of gender, race, and class have not been fully accounted for in studies of LGBTQ neighbourhoods; however, recent work has begun to confront assumptions 10.1057/9781137314352preview -Queer Presences and Absences, Edited by Yvette Taylor and Michelle Addison Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com -licensed to npg -PalgraveConnect -2016-07-29