UCLA

This dissertation examines the formation and development of West Hollywood, California, as the first "gay city" in the U.S., analyzing how cityhood was strategically employed by gay advocates to achieve unprecedented political power at the time of incorporation. It explores both the symbolic and material consequences of the cityhood project: symbolically, West Hollywood signaled the growing political legitimacy of gay and lesbian communities, demonstrating their ability to win elected office and constitute a political majority that could govern effectively; materially, cityhood enabled the enactment of progressive policies, such as domestic partnership and nondiscrimination legislation, and access to planning and policy tools that shaped key areas of municipal governance, including affordable housing, public health, public safety, and redevelopment. Using archival research and interviews, the dissertation traces the motivations and decisions of various actors involved in different phases of West Hollywood’s formation, from its incorporation campaign to post-incorporation governance and urban redevelopment. Drawing on planning history and theory, discourses of embodiment and space, and theories of neoliberalism and homonormativity, I argue that gay cityhood was simultaneously a project of identity-making and city-making, one that selectively elevated visions of gay identity aligned with economic development while marginalizing other queer livelihoods, particularly those associated with sex work. The city’s gay identity was not fixed, but strategically invoked, contested, and redefined to navigate the competing imperatives of governance, respectability, and representation. In doing so, it illustrates how cityhood functioned as a political and spatial tool that at once reinscribed and resisted dominant configurations of space, identity, and power. The dissertation contributes to discourses on the relationship between urban planning, municipal formation and governance, and the politics of sexual and gender identity.