New Books Network Damon Scott, "The City Aroused: Queer Places and Urban Redevelopment in Postwar San Francisco" (U Texas Press, 2024)
Jan 24, 2026
Damon Scott, urban historical geographer and Miami University professor, explores postwar San Francisco’s queer places and redevelopment. He traces waterfront nightlife, racial and labor solidarities, police raids and the Gayola scandal. He examines blight declarations, demolitions, and how displacement sparked collective organizing and memory preservation.
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Queer Land Uses As A Framing
- Damon Scott coined “queer land uses” to capture diverse commercial spaces that accommodated non-normative sexualities beyond the term "gay bar."
- The term foregrounds property, land tenure, and state planning as central to queer spatial history.
Maritime Labor Built Integrated Queer Spaces
- WWII-era maritime unions produced racially mixed and queer-friendly waterfront sociality through hiring halls and shipboard steward work.
- These occupational networks seeded integrated, cross-racial queer publics in San Francisco's waterfront nightlife.
Cold War Purges Reshaped The Waterfront
- Cold War purges targeted homosexuals in the merchant marine, displacing maritime workers from port jobs and pushing them into waterfront social spaces.
- These screenings intensified surveillance and reshaped which people and places mattered to city planners and police.
