Gender, identities and new connections: prospects for geography A decade into the 21st century our relationship to others has changed our attitude to space, time and symbolic constructs. Gender identities are being contested, asserted and re-organized in the light of the crises and imperatives of economic metropolitization, the environment, an increasingly mobile society and social insecurity. In view of these patterns genders must build themselves amidst a web of conflicts, resisting various forms of (economic, cultural and social) domination. Implicitly these social and economic processes call into question our right to urban life (D. Harvey, 2008) and more broadly to space itself. In geography, gender-based forms of territoriality (Louargant, 2003) have served as a prism for analysing the expression of differentiation between classes and genders in space. The spatial, social and cultural skills deployed by women's groups to take their place and gain visibility, earning the recognition of more masculine groups, are expressed in the articulation of multiple devices: strategies to circumnavigate public space; mounting of projects to achieve emancipation, assert rights and obtain forms of power ... However, these expressions of the dissociation between masculine and feminine are no longer sufficient in themselves. Identities are deployed in space (J, Butler, 1993, 2009) revealing performances which are no longer exclusively masculine or feminine either, which no longer only signify emancipatory struggles against the masculine, a game of re-articulation between masculine and feminine, but also bear witness to the multiple expressions of masculine and feminine. Identities which have become soluble in mobility, for example, interconnect, revealing strategies for anticipating or adapting to change in the present context of European cities. The behaviour and practice of mobility and migration may hold the potential for and signify hybrization (Saïd, 1983; Berdoulay, Entrikin, 1998), crossovers (W. Crenshaw, 1995; Bilge, 2010) or cross-breeding (Gouda, 2011). When analysing movement, masculine/ feminine relations reveal the hybrid nature of composite spatial objects in a metropolitan context. Genders also unfold and recompose themselves in innovative social and artistic learning processes (queer artists, Femen activists), which reflect recognition by societal interfaces (art, publicity, media). Careers and life narratives, artistic performances and images produced enable us to see and interpret the territory of gender, with the cautious enacting of a gender pedagogy. The way we see the world and its stimuli, by putting on gender spectacles, enables us to relate the choices made by spatial operators to facilitate the circulation of people (mobility policies, target groups), and to intervene on territory with a view to gender equality. The territorial players present in a metropolitan context tend to reproduce gender stereotypes in the public arena, giving rise to the construction of identities associated with exclusively masculine prerogatives (decision, control, strategy, anticipation, travel) and other care-oriented feminine identities (proximity, association, relation building, networking and the ability to operate locally). Analysing such practices reveals the tendency of public policy to essentialize issues: a space for creation, with the potential to serve as testimony, but which does not settle the debate on categorization. So how should we act, with which sort of public, and how can we avoid stereotypes? Gender identities reveal the complex processes at work.
