Journal
SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
Volume 15, Issue 8, Pages 920-941Publisher
ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2013.851263
Keywords
gentrification; queer urban ecology; Ailanthus altissima; High Line; New York City; critical urban studies
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This paper critically queers gentrification through an ecological analysis of the redevelopment of New York City's High Line. Taking the abandoned-queer-ecology-turned-homonormative park as a novel form of gay and green gentrification, I argue that the 'success' of the project must be critiqued in relational ecological terms. Intervening into the literature of gentrification, I begin to account for the material and symbolic aspects of ecological gentrification with the help of innovations in plant geography and queer ecology. To ground my analysis, I look to the process of 'succession', focusing, in particular, on one of the most established and successful plants growing on the abandoned High Line, Ailanthus altissima or the Tree of Heaven. Drawing on empirical insights, this account of the High Line's redevelopment tracks relations between queers and plants. Through layers of sexuality, ecology, and geography, the matter of displacement becomes central to a consideration of ethico-political possibilities for a queer ecological critique of urban space. In conclusion, I argue for an ethics and politics of responsibility to and for abandoned spaces that calls us to pay closer attention to the queer, the ecological, and their ongoing entanglement.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available