打印

作者

来源

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS,Vol.41,Issue3,P.409-411

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

Georgia State University

摘要

Using a rich array of archival data and 131 in-depth interviews, Trespassers? explores the history and present-day realities of Asians settling in one of the suburbs of Silicon Valley. Through “shoe-leather” exploratory research, Lung-Amam discovered Fremont, California, where the influx of Asian Americans (mainly Chinese and Indian immigrants) between 1960 and 2010 has reshaped the built environment and cultural attributes of the community. Fremont is one of the many suburbs on the eastern edge of Silicon Valley in Alameda County. Historically, it was a White working-class suburban community. In 1960, only 2% of the population was Asian. By 2010 that percentage had increased to 51%. Despite this rapid growth and the “mainstreaming” of Asian malls, supermarkets, and schools, Lung-Amam adeptly elucidates how Whites in the community maintain control mainly through subtle changes to zoning regulations. Though the Asian community has fought back, new regulations are a constant threat, making the Asian American population symbolic “trespassers” on what was once a very White space. Indeed, throughout the book Lung-Aman challenges the notion of Asians being the so-called new Whites by illustrating the many obstacles that Asian American households have faced in Fremont.It’s important to note that the Asian American community in Fremont is well educated and comfortably middle class. Many work in the surrounding high-tech industries and were attracted to Fremont because of the good school system. Thus, as Lung-Amam acknowledges at the beginning of the book, the Asian American residents of Fremont may appear to have obtained the American dream, but their right to this suburban community is racialized through contested geographies and spatial containment.Though Whites perceive the changing Asian American–influenced landscape of Fremont as abnormal or undesirable, Asian Americans see it as a way of asserting their right to live in Fremont even though they have faced opposition to integration into the community. Lung-Aman states her core argument in the introductory chapter: The forms and uses of schools, shopping malls and homes that Asian American newcomers inspired became markers of their seeming failure to integrate with and conform to their new environment. Further, these places, which I call landscapes of difference, became the focus of new city planning and design policies that tried to manage and mute their difference. (p. 7)After providing a comprehensive history of Asian American migration to Fremont, Lung-Amam turns to an examination of the three important aspects of the community influenced by Asian Americans mentioned above: schools, Asian malls, and “monster” houses. Regarding schools, as she states in the book’s introduction: They [particularly Chinese and Indian immigrants] moved into high-end neighborhoods to give their children the best education they could afford, shifting the social and academic culture of schools toward a more competitive environment with a more rigorous focus on math and science. (p. 6)This has led not only to White flight from the Fremont school system but to some Asian flight as well. In her interviews, Lung-Amam found that though White flight from the highly demanding STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)-focused schools was dominant, some Asian households had grown weary of the cutthroat academic environment as well, opting to send their children to other good but less competitive and stressful schools.The Asian mall is another arena of contested space in Fremont. The concept of the Asian mall was nonexistent in Fremont during the 1970s and early 1980s. For example, the closest city where Asian cooking ingredients could be found was Oakland, a 26.3-mile highway drive away from Fremont. In the last several decades, five Asian malls have been developed in Fremont. But these “malls” do not meet the mainstream American definition. The bitter irony here is that mainstream malls catering to “Americans” are closing at a rapid rate due to the rise of online shopping while Asian malls are thriving. Asian malls are not only places you can buy your groceries and various retail products but are social and cultural spaces as well. In fact, Lung-Amam demonstrates how these are centers of Asian social and cultural life, as well as comfort. They are also mundane because they function as service centers for needed amenities. Additionally, they include condos built on top of ground-level retail outlets. In mainstream planning terminology, such spaces would be called mixed use. But as Lung-Amam points out in Chapter 3, warnings of potential “blight” have come from local government officials regarding these places. In addition, the issue of language has come up because many of the Asian businesses have either Asian-language or bilingual signs. At the same time, Lung-Amam discovered in her city document reviews that Asian malls (or shopping centers) have not been mentioned in the city’s vision of “desirable retail.” Attracting desirable retail like Whole Foods has failed. In fact, in an interview, Fremont’s mayor stated that the city’s ethnicity was a barrier: When I asked [Fremont’s] Mayor Wasserman what had hampered the city’s recruitment efforts, he responded, “That has a lot to do with our demographics, unfortunately. Like Whole Foods. Whole Foods will never say it publicly, but the reason they’re not here is because of our ethnicity.” (p. 125)(I concluded that perhaps Fremont got lucky since Whole Foods has since been bought by Amazon and the place-base locations are constantly out of almost everything in their fresh meats department.)In Chapter 4, Lung-Amam moves on to the “monster home” issue in Fremont. To make a long story short, Asian American residents have been conducting tear-downs of 1960s ranch-style houses and rebuilding what would be considered by mainstream American society “McMansions.” This has led to a series of zoning battles. Lung-Amam points out that Asian American households engaged in this rebuilding are doing so for multigenerational households. There is no doubt that these homes are indeed quite monstrous in their appearance and could offend some neighbors and city planners. At the same time, such homes have been a trend in suburban areas throughout the country in recent decades. So why is it any different if an Asian household engages in such rebuilds? The Asian households all received the necessary approval and permits to rebuild. So it was not until city officials saw it as a trend—or some sort of racially based tipping point—that the regulatory battles begun. In documenting this, Lung-Amam brilliantly makes the analogy to such regulations targeting suburban middle-class communities, traditionally White, that over time become more ethnically and racially diverse, leading to either more regulations and/or White flight.There is an important policy-related urban/suburban planning storyline in Trespassers? Planning is multifaceted and should be inclusive of multiple ethnicities. For example, city governments want to attract affluent homeowner residents as well as businesses. Do the demographics really make a difference? It should not, given the bottom line: creating and maintaining a healthy tax base. Asian American residents have made Fremont what it is today. Given the historical process of deindustrialization, a predominantly White working-class population could not have kept this suburban city afloat. So, as Lung-Amam concludes, urban and suburban planning in the United States should embrace multiple storylines and built environment strategies to maintain the viability of cities, suburbs, and regions with growing multicultural populations.This book is well researched and well written; Lung-Amam’s shoe-leather research certainly paid off. But I’m left with two questions. My first question has to do with the East Asian (Indian) segment of Fremont’s population. There were several recent media articles reporting concerns that the Fremont Asian malls do not offer this population much of anything in terms of essential amenities. Because they are one of the largest Asian populations behind the Chinese in Fremont, this made me curious about potential inter-Asian divisions. It also leads me to wonder (my second question) how many other such mixed Asian American suburbs exist around the country and what has happened in these areas. Lung-Amam discusses such “ethnoburbs” in the introductory chapter. (See Li’s 1998 article on “ethnoburbs”—multiethnic, largely immigrant suburbs in Southern California near Los Angeles, and elsewhere.) Lung-Amam also indicates that ethnoburbs typically develop near centers of economic innovations. However, there are many tech epicenters in the Midwest where there are very few ethnoburbs. I am confident that Lung-Amam is going to delve into the subject of ethnoburbs and related subjects in future shoe-leather research.ReferenceLi, W. (1998). Anatomy of a new ethnic settlement: The Chinese Ethnoburbs of Los Angeles. Urban Studies., 35(3), 479–501. doi:10.1080/0042098984871 [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]