How Chinese Entrepreneurs Transformed the San Gabriel Valley

The Hilton Hotel in San Gabriel caters to Chinese tourists. Photo by Cebe Loomis

Korean and Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs, investors and political leaders are increasingly active players in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in mid-city Koreatown, the suburban Chinese San Gabriel Valley (SGV) and downtown LA. They have built shopping malls, hotels, condominiums and mixed-use projects servicing Asian immigrants and transnationals, tourists and local residents. These immigrant growth machines first emerged in the 1970s and 80s when the traditional Los Angeles growth machine comprised of native-born entrepreneurs and leaders was confronting white flight, slow-growth movements and a declining regional political consensus for growth (Fulton 1997, Purcell 2000, Light 2002).

Growth machines are partnerships of private and public sector interests that cooperate to advance urban development. Immigrant growth machines had to negotiate more cultural barriers, racial prejudice, and inter-ethnic conflicts than traditional growth machines. The Chinese faced more opposition from slow-growth interests than the Koreans. Yet they both persevered and are more established players now in the latest phase of metropolitan change where slow growth has given way to new growth driven by transnational capital investment, tourism and entertainment sectors, and a wave of commercial and residential gentrification bringing jobs and people back to downtown LA, mid-city and the SGV suburbs. While immigrant growth machines primarily forge new spatial clusters of urban growth and new political arenas of public/private partnership in mid-city and the suburbs, immigrant place entrepreneurs are also participants in redevelopment and transformation of the traditional downtown LA growth machine. Immigrant growth machines are integral players in the metropolitan reinvention of 21st century LA.

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The Traditional Growth Machine and Immigrant Growth Machines

The growth machine was conceived (Logan and Molotch 1987) to describe the coalition of interlocking private and public sector interests that promote urban development and generate tangible economic benefits but also social and environmental costs. In early 20th century Los Angeles the traditional Anglo growth machine emerged out of a coalition of interests including the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, the Los Angeles Times, and the Department of Water and Power (McWilliams 1973). Urban development along the Miracle Mile Wilshire corridor to the west side resulted in a polarization between Downtown and Westside growth coalitions by the end of World War II (Davis 1990). The construction of the freeway system in the postwar period and the subsequent out-movement of jobs and people promoted urban sprawl, metropolitan fragmentation in governance, disinvestment and declining power of the urban center. White flight after the Watts Riot of 1965 further aggravated the city/suburbs divide but disinvestment from areas like the mid-city Wilshire district and the middle-ring SGV suburbs also opened up opportunities for incoming Korean and Chinese immigrants to establish new settlement and investment areas. In the view of Ivan Light (2002: 218), the death of the growth machine thesis promoted by Robert Fulton in his 1997 book Reluctant Metropolis, emphasizes the loss of political consensus for growth in the native-born population but ignores the rise of the immigrant component of the growth machine.

White flight after the Watts Riot of 1965 further aggravated the city/suburbs divide but disinvestment from areas like the mid-city Wilshire district and the middle-ring SGV suburbs also opened up opportunities for incoming Korean and Chinese immigrants to establish new settlement and investment areas.

By the 1980s a new growth coalition around African American Mayor Tom Bradley had engineered redevelopment of downtown with office and residential towers, hotels, and a new civic center (Music Center), building upon urban renewal at Bunker Hill that originated in the 1950s. When Los Angeles hosted the 1984 Olympics boosting its global city ambitions, Koreatown and the Chinese SGV were already known urban destinations and Japanese corporations were active investors downtown. Yet slow growth movements became active in the 1980s throughout the region as suburban homeowners and hillside and coastal interests fought high-density development and rising property taxes while defending open space (Baldassare 1986, Sassen 1988, Davis 1990). San Fernando Valley and Hollywood secession measures however were defeated at the polls in 2002. Meanwhile sports and entertainment interests opened up another front in downtown redevelopment at South Park with Staples Center (1999) and L.A. Live (2007). Suburban slow growth movements have subsided and been superseded by livable city movements advocating green space, public transit and New Urbanist planning featuring higher-density with enlivened public spaces (Gottlieb 2007). Slow growth has given way to new growth as livable neighborhoods become new touchstones for gentrification and urban tourism. The Los Angeles growth machine has apparently moved from imminent death to new life in the new millennium with immigrant agglomerations like Koreatown and the Chinese San Gabriel Valley among the key foci of urban development.

The Chinese and Korean growth machines contrast insofar as the Chinese engage in autonomous forms of public/private partnership in the small suburban cities of the SGV, while Korean immigrants in mid-city Koreatown operate as auxiliary players in the larger arena of Los Angeles city politics (Oh and Chung 2014). But while the Chinese have gained political clout in the suburban city halls of the SGV cities they also deal with homeowner and slow growth interests. We report here on the Chinese case in the context of broader

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