The New York Times discovers that the city’s little Cambodia is getting littler. Hmmmmm … Well at those real estate prices does this surprise anyone. But 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.
