The Link Between Gays And Gentrification

"But the most striking new development is the growing number of blue-collar cities never considered especially friendly to gays that are passing gay-rights laws anyway. They seem to be saying that if gays need cities, then cities also need gays — whatever one may think about the homosexual lifestyle itself. 'Quite apart from whether you approve or disapprove of gays and what they do in the privacy of their bedroom, there's now ample evidence that you don't want to alienate that population,' says Terry Grundy, a professor at the University of Cincinnati’s School of Planning. 'In fact, you want to attract them.'... Much of this evidence comes from the work of Gary Gates, a researcher at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., and Richard Florida, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Gates was one of the first to study where gays and lesbians live, and has developed a statistical measure he calls the 'Gay Index.' "