Queer perspectives on planning and power

This chapter utilizes queer theory to examine the relationship between planning, power, and the LGBTQ community in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and Istanbul, Turkey to better understand the ways that power is used in conjunction with the planning processes to displace LGBTQ communities. In both cities, LGBTQ groups developed resistance strategies to counter neo-liberal urban development policies that threatened their communities. We highlight two key strategies: a queer power of resistance that we call ‘queer insurgency’ and a queer-theory derived strategy to change the discourse of redevelopment. In the Atlanta case, the LGBTQ community learned from the Redevelopment of Peachtree Street and its disastrous impact on the Midtown gaybourhood and came together to protect their collective rights to claim space and to survive as marginalized businesses and workers in a more sex positive environment. In the Istanbul case, the uprisings helped people to realize their own power in altering the destiny of a public space in the city as well as creating a dream-like space where collective resources and emotions were shared through the development of a queer commons during the Gezi Park protests.