Design Assimilation in Suburbia

Abstract

Ethnic suburban settlement has shaped suburban landscapes in contrasting ways. On one end are ethnoburbs, where ethnic groups used spatial politics to assert their rights of ethnic expression in the landscape. On the other—less noticed—end are places where ethnic settlers arrived en masse, and their presence was scarcely visible. This article focuses on the latter, towns where ethnic suburbanites consented to existing design mores—what we term design assimilation. Using case studies from Asian American suburbs of the west and east San Gabriel Valley, we explore the history of places where Anglo design aesthetics persisted in the midst of profound demographic change. Multiple factors created and protected these landscapes, including stringent regulatory cultures of these suburbs, white political action, accommodations by builders, and Asian American consent. Asian suburbanites supported these landscapes for aesthetic, nostalgic, political, and economic reasons, including the belief that American landscape aesthetics conveyed a social distinction that positioned them above those around them—including other Asians in the ethnoburbs. Our work shows how suburban advantage has been reinforced by new waves of immigrant suburbanites, in ways that reflect the inequities and spatial expression of globalization itself. This work offers a new perspective on immigrant suburbanization and its interface with suburban “landscapes of privilege.”