Hacking suburban social infrastructure: glitch subjects and queer practices of social reproduction.
Infrastructure – material and social – enables urban life for some people and not others. Unevenly distributed between centers and peripheries, it affords differential capacities for action and shapes regimes of social reproductive labor. This paper explores Toronto's queer suburbanisms, foregroundi...
| Published in: | Urban Geography Vol. 46; no. 9; pp. 1943 - 1970 |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Nov2025
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=188856529&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 188856529 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 02723638 0HI jtl: Urban Geography issn: 02723638 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Nov2025 vid: 46 iid: 9 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 188856529 10.1080/02723638.2025.2468071 ppf: 1943 ppct: 27 formats: tig: atl: Hacking suburban social infrastructure: glitch subjects and queer practices of social reproduction. aug: au: Bain, Alison L. Sharp, B. Wiley affil: Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University, Toronto, Canada Department of Geography and Urban Planning, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada su: Markham (Ont.) Canada Mississauga (Ont.) Brampton (Ont.) Toronto (Ont.) Suburbs LGBTQ+ people Social reproduction LGBTQ+ culture LGBTQ+ studies Urban geography Social norms Architectural philosophy sug: subj: Suburbs LGBTQ+ people Social reproduction LGBTQ+ culture LGBTQ+ studies Urban geography Social norms Markham (Ont.) Canada Mississauga (Ont.) Brampton (Ont.) Toronto (Ont.) Architectural philosophy keyword: LGBTQ+ photo-elicitation interviews social infrastructure social reproduction suburbs LGBTQ+ photo-elicitation interviews social infrastructure social reproduction suburbs ab: Infrastructure – material and social – enables urban life for some people and not others. Unevenly distributed between centers and peripheries, it affords differential capacities for action and shapes regimes of social reproductive labor. This paper explores Toronto's queer suburbanisms, foregrounding the lives of LGBTQ+ suburbanites who have been epistemically erased by urban geographies that discount sexuality and geographies of sexuality that overlook the suburban. It inductively analyzes 192 images from 19 photo-elicitation interviews conducted in the peripheral municipalities of Ajax, Markham, Mississauga, and Brampton in Canada's largest city-region, Toronto. It shifts attention away from object-centric notions of social infrastructure to prioritize its public social reproductive dimensions and affordances. In turn, it argues that LGBTQ+ suburbanites can be "glitch" subjects that "hack" suburban social infrastructure of homes, public parks, social venues, and public and private transportation, to afford the capacity for queer and trans public life to persist. Broader coalitions are still needed to unbuild cisheteronormative infrastructure and transform city-regional infrastructural landscapes. These quiet political gestures, however small, are nevertheless meaningful attempts to imagine yet-to-be-built suburban worlds. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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