Origins and Development
The work of sociologists has long been concerned with the relationship between urbanization and sexuality, especially in the form of visible clusters or neighbourhoods typified by specific sexual moralities or practices. Identification of 'vice areas' and, latterly, 'gay villages', has been a stock in trade of urban sociology since at least the time of the Chicago School.
The origins of the term "Sexuality and Space" can be traced back to the early 1990s where usage of the phrase was popularized by two publications. In 1990 what may be described as 'Gay Geography' was presented to a wider audience when an article by Larry Knopp was published in the Geographical Magazine to some controversy. In 1992 Beatriz Colomina's Sexuality and Space (Princeton Papers on Architecture) was released; in which the term is used to elaborate on the symbolism of towers and other structures as Phallic icons. The paper goes on to discuss the sexual psychology of color and other design elements. A review of the papers was released by Elizabeth Wilson in Harvard Design Magazine, Winter/Spring 1997.
Within contemporary geography, studies of sexuality are primarily social and cultural in orientation, though there is also notable engagement with political and economic geography, particular in work on the rise of queer autonomous spaces, economies and alternative (queer) capitalisms. Much work is informed by a politics intended to oppose homophobia and heterosexism, inform sexual health, and promote more inclusve forms of sexual citizenship. Methodologically, much work has been qualitative in orientation, rejecting traditional 'straight' methodologies, yet quantitative methods and GIS have also be utilized to good effect. Work remains predominantly focused on the metropolitan centres of the urban West, but there have been notable studies that focus on rural sexualities and sexualities in the global South.
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