Notes towards the queer Asian city: Singapore and Hong Kong

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed the emergence and consolidation of new and established gay cities in East and Southeast Asia, in particular, the sexualisation of the Singapore city-state, the commerce-led boom of queer Bangkok, the rise of middle-class gay consumer cultures in Manila and Hong Kong, and the proliferation of underground LGBT scenes in Shanghai and Beijing. In the West, scholarships on urban gay centres such as San Francisco, New York and London focus on the paradigms of ethnicity (Sinfield, 1996), gentrification (Bell and Binnie, 2004) and creativity (Florida, 2002). Mapping the rise of commercial gay neighbourhoods by combining the history of ghettos and its post-closet geograp..