Urban Care Knowledges and Practices in Queer Spaces

In this presentation I will discuss the findings of ongoing research from two projects. The first one looks at queer housing and the levels of care therein and how alternative forms of housing provide safer spaces for LGBTQI+ people. The second one explores how the pandemic has affected queer spaces. These can range from informal and formal community spaces, advocacy organizations, STD clinics, cruising spaces in public space, and highly diverse nightlife and gastronomic spaces. The pandemic made community making, care, information and help exchange therein impossible, resulting in comparatively higher levels of loneliness, mental health problems, suicides, physical threats, exclusion, and drug abuse in the queer community. The presentation thus looks at both, the social and spatial dimensions of care and the lack thereof (ranging from the micro to the macro) with the example of selected private and public spaces Berlin with an intersectional perspective, also exploring how these spaces form important urban infrastructure and may result in more solidarity and just urban development, often also beyond the local LGBTQI+ community.