Congress Paper Abstract

Gender and the city: exploring the relationship between gender reassignment and the urban landscape

Garuth Chalfont, MA, 

Email: rchalfon@bss2.umd.edu

As I transition my female body towards the physical manifestation of my inherent manhood, I feel that I am in some way re-inhabiting this city called flesh and bone; re-imagining my architecture, my urban fabric into the redesign of a livable space. Much like urban revitalization I seek to redesign the decaying core; the aging forms of a defunct metropolis, in an attempt to retrofit infrastructure, rekindle community, and redefine the connective spaces as lively and vital.

This paper argues that the place experienced as the postmodern urban landscape has some startling correlation’s of meaning to the place experienced within the transsexual body. The focus is derived from life experience, namely the female-to-male transsexual body in the early stages of transition. The geographical theory derives from my ongoing work with space, place and the cultural landscape. As a geographer and designer I am constantly interested in better models for the built world. As a human being dealt the card of a transsexual experience I am designing the city of my body to inhabit into the new millenium.

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