First Three-City
Chinatown Land-Use Study Shows Asian Americans Displaced from East Coast
Chinatowns
Philadelphia, Boston,
and New York City Chinatowns Under Threat
Today, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
(AALDEF) held a briefing webinar to launch its new report on the dramatic
gentrification of Chinatowns in Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia in the
past three decades. The report, Chinatown Then
and Now, contains some of the first-ever land-use data collected
on the three largest Chinatowns on the East Coast.
“Chinatowns have provided the city’s immigrants with support
networks and affordable housing for over a century,” said Bethany Li, staff
attorney at AALDEF. “Gentrification and ongoing redevelopment projects,
however, threaten to destroy the sustainability of these once-thriving
immigrant communities.”
AALDEF, in collaboration with community partners, academic
institutions, and hundreds of volunteers, spent a year recording data,
block-by-block and lot-by-lot, in order to document the existing land uses in
the three Chinatowns. This first of its kind report reveals current commercial,
residential, and industrial patterns in Chinatowns that shed light on the
importance of these neighborhoods to immigrant communities and highlight spaces
of particular vulnerability to gentrification.
The white population in Chinatown has increased faster than the
overall population in the three cities, especially over the last decade, with
the number of white residents doubling in Boston and Philadelphia. Family
households have also decreased dramatically in Chinatowns, from 73% to
47% in Boston, 82% to 73% in New York, and 61% to 49% in Philadelphia, which is
a key indicator of gentrification.
"This report is a sound warning to all of us that
Chinatowns are turning into a sanitized ethnic playground for the rich to
satisfy their exotic appetite for a dim sum and fortune cookie fix,” said
Andrew Leong, J.D., Associate Professor, College of Public and Community
Service, University of Massachusetts/Boston. “We must fight for the
preservation of a vibrant, living Chinatown that serves the residential and
small business needs of working class immigrants.”
In all three Chinatowns, government policies have accelerated
gentrification in unique ways. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg’s 12-year term
marked an era of high redevelopment, including massive rezoning changes and the
designation of Chinatown as a Business Improvement District (BID). The land use
study shows the "high-end" retail stores dotting Chinatown boundaries
are now heading towards more traditional parts of the area. Moreover, relaxed
rent regulation laws have enabled land-owners to illegally evict low-income
tenants in favor of those who can afford the higher rent.
In Philadelphia, luxury development continues despite the need
for affordable housing and green space. Philadelphia’s Chinatown has the least
amount of green space of any of the three areas surveyed.
In Boston, institutional development has shaped Chinatown more
significantly than in other cities, as the land use data shows that many of the
parcels are devoted to large institutional uses (Tuft University Medical
Center, Emerson College, and Suffolk University) that have not added resources
for Asian immigrants living and working in the neighborhood. Boston’s Chinatown
is now also vulnerable to planned luxury development.
“The gentrification that threatens to transform these areas is
not just the natural result of market forces or the general evolution of these
cities," said Li. “They are a very direct result of local policies of
neglect, demolition, and redevelopment that local governments have perpetuated
for decades. The uproar over the construction of a Walmart in Los Angeles
Chinatown should serve as a warning to everyone who is concerned with the
survival of Chinatowns on the East Coast.”
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