ABSTRACT

Dear attacks the classic concentric zone formulation of urban development promulgated by Ernest Burgess of the Chicago School. Chicago was the prototype of the world metropolis during the early twentieth century, during which railroad infrastructure concentrated the business district in a central location and transportation lines radiated outwards in a hub-and-spoke fashion into the suburbs. Racial/ethnic and subcultural minorities were subsumed, marginalized, or assimilated both socially and spatially into urban life, while the elite interests ruled the city center, controlling politics, land markets, and the cultural values of hegemonic interests. Since World War II, with the emergence of cities like Los Angeles built around a freeway infrastructure, the business district has become poly-nucleated or multi-polar, and the center has relinquished authority to the hinterlands. The forces of cultural assimilation have also become more fragmented with the arrival of new immigrants and overseas capital investment from Asia, Latin America, and other regions, and the ascendance of Los Angeles as a major command and manufacturing center in the new global economy. Immigrant colonies do not disappear so much anymore with the process of invasion–succession, while ethnic suburbs are emerging on the urban periphery. These “ethnoburbs” are emerging to become new poles of economic and cultural activity, acting as transaction nodes to other world trading regions.