Banishment through Branding: From Montréal’s Red Light District to Quartier des Spectacles

Rhianne Fiolka (), Zack Marshall and Anna Kramer
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Rhianne Fiolka: School of Urban Planning, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0C2, Canada
Zack Marshall: School of Social Work, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 1B9, Canada
Anna Kramer: School of Urban Planning, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0C2, Canada

Social Sciences, 2022, vol. 11, issue 9, 1-20

Abstract: This paper analyzes how the City of Montréal employed tools of urban planning—including a district plan, street redesign, rezoning, selective public consultation, expropriation, policing and surveillance—to spatially banish sex work from its historic district, using the red light symbol as a branding strategy. This coincided with a change in federal law (Bill C-36) and a policy shift to reposition sex workers as passive victims of sex trafficking. Using a case study design, this work explores the state’s refusal to recognize the agency of those engaged in embodied socio-economic exchanges and the safety and solidarity possible in public space. In interviews, sex workers described strategies of collective organizing, resistance and protest to hold the city accountable during this process of displacement. We consider how urban planning might support sex work, sex workers and economic autonomy.

Keywords: sex work; urban planning; policy; gentrification; criminalization; social history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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