Coming out to oneself as gay or lesbian a generation ago usually prompted a move to the nearest big city, specifically to those infamous districts lesbians and gays were known to inhabit. Greenwich Village in New York, DuPont Circle in Washington, the Castro district in San Francisco, and other gay enclaves may not have been the swankest parts of town, but they offered a critical mass of other homosexuals, allowing for a certain amount of freedom that was hard to find in, say, Scarsdale or Bethesda or any small town. Lesbians and gays soon revitalized these neighborhoods, starting bars, bookstores, theaters, and restaurants.

The politics and style of the lesbian and gay rights movement were forged in these lively urban centers in the '70s and '80s. But Daniel Mendelsohn in Out magazine (March 1995) reveals that now growing numbers of lesbians and gays are forsaking urban life for the suburbs. What will this mean for cities and how will it change gay and lesbian culture?

At a 1994 meeting of the American Planning Association (APA), a small group of urban planners discussed the effects of this trend on cities. Mendelsohn quotes Lilia Medina, a San Francisco census coordinator who participated in the APA panel: ''A very significant proportion of housing renovation and neighborhood improvement in San Francisco has been primarily the result of moderate-income gay households that have invested work and time in a crowded urban setting. And they do so for that feeling of freedom, protection and self-expression provided by gay neighborhoods.'' But that freedom and safety can't be taken for granted today; urban violence and the rising cost of living in cities may be two reasons lesbians and gays are heading to the frontiers of the suburbs and to other less gay-identified city neighborhoods.

For some time now, gentrified gay enclaves like the Village, the Castro, and DuPont Circle haven't been financially accessible to most lesbians and many gays. Those living there are 'a mostly white, mostly male privileged group, which has never constituted a true sampling of the gay population,' says Larry Knopp, an associate professor of geography at the University of Minnesota in Duluth who was invited to participate in the APA panel. His own research on gay migration out of New Orleans revealed life-cycle issues as a primary factor: The pace of life in the suburbs was more desirable for older gays, who 'neither needed nor wanted to be in the thick of the gay scene,' says Knopp.