Should Gay Districts Be Preserved?

"The integration of gay and straight is increasingly evident not only in the Castro District but across North America, from Chicago to New York City to Toronto, where urban revitalization is bringing new residents at the same time some gays are settling in other parts of cities or the suburbs -- such as the East Bay.

But some gay and lesbian residents of the Castro are worried that the culture and history of their world-famous neighborhood could be lost in the process, and they have started a campaign to preserve its character. The city, meanwhile, is spending $100,000 on a plan aimed at keeping the area's gay identity intact.

Heterosexuals "are welcome as long as they understand this is our community," said Adam Light, a leader in the Castro Coalition, a group formed eight months ago to address the shifts in the neighborhood in recent years."

"The Castro's gay and lesbian residents need to be actively involved in neighborhood planning if they want to see the area maintain its identity, said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, chair of the School of Public Affairs and Urban Planning at UCLA."

"I think the only gay neighborhood that is going to survive is the Castro," said Don Reuter, a New York writer who has spent the past seven months documenting the status of gay enclaves in 12 U.S. cities. "In every city this is going on. We're unraveling. Our gay neighborhoods are unraveling," he said.

"A district of gay nightclubs in southern Washington, D.C., is being demolished to make room for a new stadium. And in Toronto, high-rise condos are replacing parking lots in the Gay Village, and more heterosexuals are moving into the neighborhood."

"You can't tell people where to live, and people are making all sorts of decisions," said Kyle Raye, Toronto's first openly gay city councilman who has represented the Gay Village area since 1991. "The lines are blurred; even the police love working (during gay pride events). There are significant social changes that have occurred."

"San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau chief Joe D'Alessandro, who lives in the Castro with his gay partner and their six children, said he thinks gay enclaves marginalize the people who live there. He said the gay community in his previous home of Portland, Ore., a city without a historically gay neighborhood, is a model because gay and lesbian residents comfortably live in the mainstream."

"They do not live in a ghetto," D'Alessandro said, "and I think they're stronger because of it."