Whither queer suburbanisms? Beyond suburban heteronormativity and the hegemony of the queer urban.

Despite renewed interest in suburban studies and a decentring of geographies of sexualities, the queer suburban remains a neglected arena of inquiry. This paper argues for greater attention to ‘queer’ suburbanisms to deconstruct suburbia as implicitly heterosexualized. It critiques the persistent heteronormativity of key concepts – suburbanization, suburban diversification, and suburbanisms – in Anglo-American-Australian suburban studies. It then remaps the LGBTQ+ urban by highlighting inconsistencies in queer metronormativities critiques and evaluating census studies and gay ethnographies to decentre the queer metropolis. The paper concludes by complicating how queer metronormativities conceive of their margins and destabilizing the sexual contours of heterosuburbia.