Recent Changes in Business and Areal Differentiation in the International District, Seattle, Washington

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to examine the recent changes in businesses in the International District (ID), a complex Asian ethnic enclave in Seattle, Washington, and to consider the characteristics and trends of this area focusing on its internal areal differentiation.According to our field surveys of the ID at four different times (Aug., 1991; July, 1997; Sept., 2001; Aug., 2003), the following tendencies of ethnic business can be pointed out; 1) Chinese businesses have had full variety of businesses both in the retail and service sectors which have been mainly located in the historical core area of the ID and their number has been increasing through the survey period. 2) The number of Japanese businesses has been decreasing, but a small cluster of those has remained within the core area of the former Japantown. 3) There has been a striking growth of Vietnamese businesses in the northeast corner of the ID and this area had developed into a sizable ethnic business cluster by 2001.It is noteworthy that we can see three different areas within the ID, each of which has a particular different developmental stage of ethnic town. The Chinatown is now considered to be an ethnic business town operating as an economic and cultural focus for a spatially dispersed ethnic community, the present Japantown can be seen as a residual core of the former large ethnic town, and the Vietnam Town has been developed from the early stage to the more mature stage of an ethnic town through the survey period. However, it should be also noted that a large new business space has been created in the southwest fringe of the ID by a non-community-based redevelopment project.