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Gender symbols and urban landscapes

are everchanging and so too, in different ways, are our ideas and experiences of femininity and masculinity. This article is prompted by an apparent interplay between changing gender identities and changing urban landscapes. More specifically, I am interested in whether it is possible to ’read’ the urban landscape for statements about, and constructions of, femininity and masculinity, and, if so, what versions of femininity and masculinity are being articulated in contemporary forms of urban change. I take gentrification as a key example of such change, both because of its high visibility within many western cities, and because of suggestions that it is, at least in part, an expression of changing gender divisions (Smith, 1987; Rose, 1989; Warde, 1991, Bondi, 1991). In so doing I seek to extend feminist analyses of urban change by considering the material significance of cultural symbols. I shall return to the issue of ’reading’ the landscape shortly, but first note that the opposition between femininity and masculinity is one of the most pervasive yet unexamined dualisms in social thinking. As unexamined discourse it entails complex and subtle shifts between different points of reference, especially between sociological categories, which refer to women and men as socially differentiated groups, and symbolic categories, which refer to cultural representations or codings of Woman and Man (cf. Moore, 1988; Poovey, 1988). Sayer (1989) has counselled against the use of sets of parallel dichotomies, arguing that ’reality’ rarely conforms to such straightforward oppositions. In a similar manner I want to argue that an adequate analysis of the relationship between gender divisions and urban change must disentangle symbolic and sociological aspects of gender, rather than assume direct correspondence. In addition, I