Brokering Belonging in Boyle Heights: Social Infrastructure in a Queer Salon
Traditional urban planning approaches to social infrastructure center formal institutions such as libraries and parks (Klinenberg 2018). Expanding this notion to include every day, community-rooted informal third places reveal how these spaces provide support, a sense of belonging, and resilience in marginalized communities. This thesis investigates how Vanessa’s Barber and Beauty Salon, a queer and trans-led business in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, acts as a site of social infrastructure for low-income, immigrant, and LGBTQ+ communities. Through eight months of participant observation and 15 semi-structured interviews with salon workers, owner, clients, and community members, this thesis reveals how Vanessa’s salon provides resources such as housing, employment, emotional support, and social connectivity through extensive neighborhood ties. Workers engage in brokering to meet community needs and, together, create a welcoming and inclusive space that extends into the public sphere. The salon becomes a community hub of belonging for a community facing exclusion and discrimination throughout the city. This study calls for planners to recognize and protect community social infrastructure as essential to urban life and the livelihoods of marginalized residents.
