Since 2019, around 100 Polish local governments have declared their regions to be “LGBT-free zones”, according to the Gay Travel Index, homosexuals face the death penalty in 15 countries worldwide and homophobic or trans-hostile attacks regularly take place in public and private spaces in Germany too. In the June 2021 issue of G+L, we set an example for a colorful city with positive examples. We present the Queer Inclusive Planning approach and discuss with experts from urban society how planning can support and promote diversity and tolerance in our cities. In the editorial of G+L 06/21, editor-in-chief Theresa Ramisch poses the question of how we can take into account the special needs of public space in terms of colorful and diverse urban planning.
LGBTIQ community remains a minority despite increasing rights
June is Pride Month. This month, the LGBTIQ community around the world commemorates the uprising at the Stonewall Inn gay bar in New York in 1969, where homosexual and transgender people resisted arrest by the New York police one night in June following several raids. Massive protests followed, which lasted around a week and were accompanied by street battles.
Today, for many, the Stonewall Uprising marks the beginning of the gay and lesbian movement and a key turning point in their fight for equal treatment and social recognition. Just one month after the riots, the first “Gay March” from Washington Square to the Stonewall Inn took place in 1969. The first gay pride parades followed a year later.
In Germany, the right to sexual self-determination is enshrined in the Basic Law. In addition, “marriage for all” came into force in October 2017. Despite increasing rights, the LGBTIQ community remains a minority that continues to be persecuted or socially excluded in many places. In Poland, for example, around 100 voivodeships have introduced “LGBT-free zones” since 2019.
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Changing living concepts
In the first two issues of this year’s City Special, we at G+L discussed the increasing pressure on space in our major cities and the future of rural areas. This third and final issue is about the fact that we are not only having more people in our cities and fewer in the countryside, but are also becoming more diverse as a society. Demographic change cannot just be reduced to age and migration; the diversity of lifestyles is also increasing.
In this issue, we use the LGBTIQ community to discuss how we as planners deal with this change in lifestyle concepts. Queer lifestyles are representative of the increasing colorful diversity in our cities – even if the LGBTIQ community as a minority only makes up part of this diversity. At the same time, relatively little is known about them in terms of planning.
What needs to be considered in colorful and diverse urban planning?
LGBTIQ – the term alone causes a certain amount of uncertainty among many planners. What is the best way to describe people who define themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex? Do queer people have specific needs in terms of public space that we need to take into account for the purposes of colorful and diverse urban planning? And should we do this at all, when it is actually our job to design spaces for everyone? We ask all these questions in the June 2021 issue and take a look at Freiburg, Mainz and Vienna, among others. With this in mind: Happy Pride!
PS: This issue is the last in this year’s City Special series. Under the motto “Cities for tomorrow”, we will be discussing three topics in three consecutive issues that no planning department can currently ignore.