'Out' in Columbus: A Geospatial Analysis of the Neighborhood-Level Distribution of Gay and Lesbian Households.

Research on urban growth and vitality suggests that gay men concentrate in high quality of life cities, indicated by high-tech development, diversity, and city amenities. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the degree to which theories of urban renewal and economic development-including Florida's creative class-can explain the neighborhood-level distribution of lesbians and gays within a city. Using 2000 U.S. Census data, tax parcel data, and other data sources, we conduct multivariate spatial regression to investigate the distribution of lesbians and gays in Columbus, Ohio, and their relationship to diversity, openness, and amenities. While the neighborhood distribution of gay men is associated with many of these characteristics, lesbian housing patterns are not. We do, however, find both lesbians and gays concentrate in tracts with other gay and lesbian households and that gay residential patterns are influenced by gay concentration in neighboring tracts suggesting that geographic clustering may also be a protective mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]