Movers and Shakers

How immigrants are reviving neighborhoods given up for dead

Joel Kotkin from the December 2000 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

In the coming decades, this disconnect between the labor force and the economy in some areas could lead to an exodus of middle-class people and businesses to less troubled places, as happened previously in inner cities. Across the country, many aging suburbs, such as Upper Darby near Philadelphia and Harvey outside Chicago, are well on the way to becoming highly diverse suburban slums as businesses move farther out in-to the geographic periphery. Others-in regions including Boston, New Orleans, Cleveland, St. Louis, Dallas, and Indianapolis-now struggle to retain their attractiveness.

If unchecked, a broader ghettoization looms as a distinct possibility, particularly in some of the older areas filled with smaller houses and more mundane apartment buildings. These areas could become -as have some suburbs of Paris-dysfunctional, balkanized losers in the new digital geography. "It's a different place now. We can go either way," says Robert Scott, a former L.A. planning commissioner and leader of the San Fernando Valley's drive to secede from Los Angeles.

Scott grew up in the once all-white, now predominantly Latino community of Van Nuys. "The valley can become a storehouse of poverty and disenchantment," he says, "or it can become a series of neighborhoods with a sense of uniqueness and an investment in its future." As Scott suggests, for these new melting pots, the best course may be not so much to try clinging to their demographic past as to find a way to seize the advantages of their more diverse roles, both economically and demographically. No longer "lily white" enclaves, such communities increasingly must draw their strength, as the great cities before them did, from the energies, skills, and cultural offerings of their increasingly diverse populations.

Comments

Pingback| 11.19.09 @ 2:47AM

California #1 in list of states in Peril - (CA) - Page 9 - City-Data Forum links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…stayed in Manhattan beach at a corporate digg. Next time you come to LA, you need to visit the non-touristy places. Here's an article you should read even though it was written in 2000: http://reason.com/archives/2000/12/0...s-and-shakers/ You need to visit the areas of LA with more immigrants in them like Koreatown, Monterey Park, Glendale, Westminister, downtown LA, etc. Last edited by UB50; Today at 12:58 AM..  …