Photo: waltarrrrr/Flickr/Creative Commons License.
What features will define L.A.'s future?
Learn More About This Discussion
architecture What is the Third Los Angeles? What is the Third Los Angeles? It's a way of describing the new civic identity that Los Angeles is working, and often struggling, to establish.
Read More
Lost L.A.
A City in Opposition: How History Shapes Tomorrow's Los Angeles A proposed ballot measure seeks to slow down development in Los Angeles. As the city debates its future, D.J. Waldie considers the lessons we can draw from its past.
Read More
Architecture and Design Blackbirds: Barbara Bestors Housing Experiment Lands in Echo Park Seventy years after the Case Study House Program, community development project Blackbirds is a contemporary experiment in configurating new definitions of housing. Built on the site of five former single-family residence parcels, the complex is compri...
Read More
Architecture and Design Good Design Is for Everyone: The Evolution of Low-Income Housing in L.A. What would it mean for L.A. to become known for a successful and sustainable network of beautiful housing projects for its most vulnerable citizens?
Read More
1 of 2
next
Architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne partners with Artbound for an episode that looks into the future of Los Angeles. Third L.A. with Architecture Critic Christopher Hawthorne, debuting June 14 on KCET, considers the citys changing architecture, urban planning, transportation and demographics. From Venice Beach to Leimert Park, and Hollywood to East L.A., the program also analyzes long-held cliches and stereotypes about city.
The following essay examines the saying L.A. is a city of immigrants.
In the essay Sour Grapes (2000), Chicana writer Cherr e Moraga writes of going to the San Gabriel Mission, only two blocks from where she grew up in San Gabriel. One afternoon, as the children sit within its cool stone walls, after roll-calling the rolling r's of each of the Spanish friars names carved into the man-sized floor plaque filling the center aisle floor, [t]he nun tells us, There are dead Indians buried down there, too.' She said this too' like an after- thought. Young Cherr e reflects: Down there'... Down there under my white Oxford mission schoolgirl soles, shuffling against the creaking wooden pews and a buried history. Looking back, she concludes that she is neither Spanish friar nor mission Indian, but its Indian history Im diggin up, diggin for, thirty-five years later... I am once twice three times removed. But I know... I aint all-immigrant.
I ain't all-immigrant. Moraga's childhood ruminations contain a truth about Los Angeles already known to many about the personal legacies of mixed indigenous, colonial, and global histories in the Americas. However, for many others, this truth has never been recognized, and is usually obscured in mainstream narratives of the city.
L.A. is a city of immigrants, we constantly say, and are told. This is true, to a degree. But by saying this, what is not being said? Who are imagined to be immigrants, and who are not? For those of us who are seen as immigrants, how long are we immigrants -- for how many generations? Do Black people get to be immigrants? Where are indigenous people in this narrative?
--
--
These questions matter because all too often, only people of color are considered immigrants, while the settler colonial migration of white people from Europe to the Americas, and westward from the East Coast, goes unremarked. In fact, the phrase L.A. is a city of immigrants typically excludes white people from its imagination of place, casting them as neutral and natural occupants of the land. In doing so, it implies that immigrants (read: people of color) are perpetually new arrivals. It erases the genocide and dispossession of indigenous people and the forced migration of enslaved Africans. More subtly, the connotation that immigration is a voluntary decision made by individuals masks the global power dynamics that have created countless refugees of wars waged by the U.S. as well as pervasive economic and political inequality between nations.
For The Changs Next Door to the D azes, my book about Los Angeles' San Gabriel Valley, I interviewed people whose families have been in the area for generations, since before the U.S. conquest of Alta California. Their ancestors -- indigenous and Mexican, were buried at the mission. They worked the oil wells in the hills, picked strawberries in the fields, and labored in the blue-collar factories of Downey, Southgate, and Bell alongside African Americans and poor whites. Asian Americans -- Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Indian -- have worked the fields of eastern L.A. County since the early 1900s, and settled here for generations, too. Japanese Americans and Mexican Americans in particular made their own hybrid neighborhood cultures in Boyle Heights, East L.A., Monterey Park, and Montebello from the 1950s to the 1980s. After 1965, due to changes in immigration law, greater numbers of ethnic Chinese migrants arrived and transformed the commercial and residential landscapes of the San Gabriel Valley. Southeast Asians from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos came too as refugees, from what the Vietnamese call the American War.
Photo: Laurie Avocado/Flickr/Creative Commons License.
Now these waves of first migrants have given rise to second, third, and fourth generations. Are they -- we -- still immigrants, or do we need to come up with a better term for people who are not white, who blend non-European cultures into the fabric of a city that has always been multiracial anyway -- and before that, indigenous? Who and what gets to be considered American ? In violent, polarizing times, how we answer this question is vitally important. Can we t
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
The days are getting longer, the temperatures are rising, and playlists are filling up for the season. With summer around the corner, Spotify's global edito...
29/05/2026
New retro-inspired MPC announced
There are few devices that have gained the status held by Akai Pro's MPC range, and in recent years, the company have s...
29/05/2026
Save up to 30 on acclaimed titles
Following a successful launch at Superbooth 2026, Bjooks have revealed that they will be continuing the Kickstarter campa...
29/05/2026
Binaural monitoring application improved
Genelec have just released an update that brings some powerful new features to their HRTF-based binaural headphone ...
29/05/2026
6 June 2026 at SAE Institute, London, UK
IMSTA FESTA 2026 is almost upon us, with some of the biggest names in pro-audio set to descend upon SAE Institute i...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
Latino Film Institute Fellows Screen Their Short Films at the Egyptian Theatre
The Inclusion Fellowship and Spark Animation Grant uplifts 15 ...
29/05/2026
GLOOKAST LAUNCHES CINNAFILM TACHYON PLUGIN FOR MEDIA PRODUCER AND MEDIA SERVICES
This release first appeared here.
Visit our Tachyon product page or contact...
29/05/2026
May 29 2026, 09:00 (PDT) Dolby and rednote Bring More Immersive Storytelling to...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Youtube exclusive special drops today
Watch now
UKTV today announces another e...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
The Official Trailer of Physical 100 Italy, on Netflix From Se...
Photo: waltarrrrr/Flickr/Creative Commons License. 
