The New York Times discovers that the city’s little Cambodia is getting littler. Hmmmmm. Well,
at those real estate prices does this really surprise anyone?
All over the country – and all over North American actually – immigrant
populations have been moving out of urban enclaves and into the
suburbs. As Tyler Cowen will tell you, the best ethnic restaurants in
DC aren’t in the city but in the suburbs. Brookings demographer Bill
Frey reports that by 2000 more immigrants in U.S. metro areas lived in
suburbs than cities; and Audrey Singer’s detailed research documents this shift in greater Washington DC and elsewhere.
The old model of immigrants locating and forming ethnic communities
in central city neighborhoods is no longer the dominant pattern. It’s
not even a matter of immigrant succession – land first in the cities
and then head to the suburbs – more and more immigrants are heading
directly to the suburbs. Many city neighborhoods which used to attract
immigrants are becoming too expensive, and suburbs frequently offer
better schools and other “amenities” immigrants require. In fact, our
entire “urban structure” is changing fairly dramatically as a
consequence of idea-driven economies and the sorting of populations by
class, life-stage and other factors.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Looking at Toronto, 15 years ago, all the Persian (Iranian) community lived in the City. Today, although they run many businesses in North York, the majority have moved to Richmond Hill.
I have asked many people why. The answer is immigrants cannot find the life style that they desire in the City (because of real estate prices). Moreover, they are looking for a community of their own to build. They have found the virgin suburbs a good place for a fresh start. They find it easier to get engaged in all sort of community activities when they have built it themselves. They have even elected their own MPP. They run the schools, businesses and seasonal festivals. They feel at home in the suburbs much more than they would in the city, where they are seen as minorities.
However, it is interesting to see that their children (second generation) move out of the community and choose big cities to reside in. Perhaps, because they are second generation, they do feel that they belong, even in the big city.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Anecdotally, I would say that Houston follows along with this trend. There are two Chinatowns, one near downtown and one in the southwestern suburbs. The on the eastern edge of downtown Chinatown is gradually being swallowed by downtown expansion, while the suburban Chinatown has grown more prominent and grander over the years. Indians immigrants live all over Houston, but for a some reason, lots and lots of them live in Sugar Land and Fort Bend County, which is way southwest of Houston (actually beyond its city limits). Koreans have their own neighborhood in a northwest suburb. It seems that Vietnamese immigrants still cluster just south of downtown (to judge by the number of Vietnamese businesses there), but a couple of summers ago, I noticed a knot of Vietnamese restaurants in one area in far northwest Houston, making me wonder if that area had not become a suburban outpost for the Vietnamese community.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Immigrants didn’t necessarily come to America looking for big cities. Mostly they look(ed) for cheap housing, employment, good schools and community with their ethnic group. The first half of the 20th Century they found it (largely) in cities. Now those things are in the suburbs. In Portland the Asian software engineers and Latino gardeners are both in the suburbs (usually different suburbs). In addition to all of the mom & pop ethnic groceries, which are everywhere, there are now at least two Asian supermarkets and one Latino supermarket — all 3 in suburbs to the East & West. When one of my daughters married a man of Indian heritage in a Hindu wedding, I needed to buy myself Indian clothes and found that they were in available the suburbs.
On the other hand, even 100 years ago they didn’t all go to the cities. My wife’s Italian grandparents went to Wyoming before settling in Ogden. My Irish great-grandparents ended up in Appalachian West Virginia.
One other phenomena. For the first 1 or 2 generations, immigrants tend to stay in ethnic communities. But later on they tend to assimilate and spread out in the general population.
And one more. Some immigrant groups from more extended family cultures are buying MacMansions and 2 or more nuclear families will share the house. A few developers are even building for this, with almost apartments on each end and common space in the middle. My aunt in Salinas complains about it, probably because it’s not familiar.
January 25th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
MW – Very nicely said.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I’d be careful about jumping to conclusions about current events. I think if you really go back and look at the little Italys, Germantowns, and Chinatowns over the past 200 years in the U.S. you’ll find that they often weren’t central city areas at all when they were founded. Rather they were on the undesirable outskirts of town in cities that had much smaller footprints in the past than today’s metro areas (so small they would constitute little more than a large neighborhood today. The cities swallowed up their fringe areas and today much of what we think of as “downtown” was actually a suburb of its time.
Even today’s close in, “near north” suburbs were often yesterday’s summer homes and a day’s journey away – so far beyond commuting distance that the men stayed in the city during the week only joining the family on the weekends. Neighborhoods with historic “townhouses” were often on the outskirts of town at the time they were built and you can map the march to suburbia over generations by following the path of ethnic neighborhoods as they migrated outward from colonial cities like Boston, Baltimore, Phili and New York.
January 26th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Boston’s Chinatown has been shrinking for years. Many Chinese-Americans began moving from the City of Boston to the City of Quincy, just south of Boston, in the early 1990’s. The Red Line on Boston’s subway system runs directly from Boston’s Chinatown to Quincy. Today, the city of Quincy is home to a significant number of Chinese-Americans and this has meant a cultural shift in what has been a traditional Irish-American political stronghold. Although no Chinese-American has yet to be elected, the community has begun its move into the political and civic realm, and as would be expected, into leadership positions within the business community.
I ran a creative public/private economic development corporation in Quincy in the early-to mid-1990’s. I established a retail incubator, an entrepreneur-development program and an innovative loan pool. One of my frustrations was ,despite several attempts,an inability to bring the Chinese-American community into these transformational programs.
It took about a decade(years after I left) until the Chinese-American community became exceptionally active within the business community. They have taken advantage of the loan program, opened businesses of all types and in essence given Quincy a new layer of creativity and culture. It has been a delightful occurrence.
Boston’s real estate boom was Quincy’s gain. That boom improved a community of 90,000 just to its south. Quincy is more alive, more vibrant and more successful than ever.