Introduction

This introduction presents some key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the concept of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) community. It draws on an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded research project on understandings and experiences of LGBT communities. Drawing on spatial understandings of communities, early work on homosexuality emerging within geography and urban sociology in the late 1970s and 1980s tended to focus on specific geographical areas, often in America. Frequently these were known as 'gay ghettos', 'gay villages' or more recently and particularly in the US, 'gayborhoods'. In 1994, Valentine has pointed to the extent to which 'ghettos' are often dominated by gay men. An another tradition draws on cultural sociology and anthropology in its focus on a search for belonging and/or the cultural construction of identities. The research on which this book draws took place throughout the UK in 2012 within the cross-research council 'Connected Communities' programme of work.