In light of the recent killing of 49 people at Pulse, a gay night club in Orlando known to many as a center for Queer and Latinx culture, our focus for this week’s podcast is the role and significance of queer spaces in creating community and culture. We wanted to use this time to encourage constructive discussion of why recognizing, and preserving (in some way), these 'third spaces' is so important. Not just for those who identify as queer or the Latinx community, but for creating diverse, welcoming urban spaces for all. We’re joined by two guests, Susan Surface: a queer designer, curator, organizer, and the program director at Design in Public in Seattle, and James Rojas: an urban planner trained at MIT and specializing in cultural landscapes, who has written extensively about Latino urbanism.