ABSTRACT
Queerying Planning: Challenging Heteronormative Assumptions and Reframing Planning Practice, poses a set of queer questions for planning practitioners and scholars interested in urban development issues about the ways that current planning practices have neglected the needs of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community for safe urban spaces in which to live, work, and play. This chapter explores a brief review of the evolution of LGBT neighborhoods and examines a number of important planning issues for the LGBT community, by the queer discourse that surrounds their evolution. Recently, urban planners in the United States celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the first American city planning conference, held in May of 1909 in Washington, DC. This conference brought together representatives of two distinct movements with different visions of the city, the Social Reform and the City Beautiful Movements. The chapter also explores an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book.
