Immigrants and the Revitalization of Los Angeles: Development and ...

and increased regulation. They have ample low-income neighborhoods to choose from, yet, historically, they usually have chosen to redevelop immigrant neighborhoods. As David Diaz stated, “The early history of redevelopment is directly linked to the immigrant experience in the United States” (Diaz 2005). Why is the gaze of redevelopment so attracted to the immigrants' milieu?

Neighborhoods near the CBD, according to sociologist Ernest W. Burgess, are natural areas for acculturation to urban life, where immigrants cluster for cultural and economic reasons in zones of transition (Burgess 1925). Figure 2 shows Burgess' famous model of urban growth, which was based on concentric circles showing the relationship between the locations of immigrant neighborhoods and their proximity to the CBD.

The gaze, representative of the political and planning institutions of the CBD elite and city powerbrokers who sought to capitalize on low-income spaces, has been historically attracted to the immigrants' milieu because of the dynamic cultural and economic relationships existing in the area. The organic institutions that emerge from the immigrants' milieu represent an attractive space in which to implement the regulative institutional forces of the city's planning apparatus.

Michel Laguerre explained in his book The Global Ethnopolis how various cities have institutionalized these organic forms existing within the immigrants' milieu. He described the phases the city uses to incorporate the milieu into its formal institutional apparatus (Laguerre 2000). He argued that incorporation of immigrant neighborhoods occurs through the following phases: 1) insertion; 2) confrontation; 3) incorporation; 4) maturity; and 5) “parkization.” The model describes how immigrants first move into a space and how city hall attempts to dismantle the new settlement, leading to phase three, when city hall integrates the settlement into the rest of the city by providing social services and extracting taxes. The maturity phase occurs when the new settlement organizes its grassroots political system to gain more participation in city hall politics. Lastly, city hall transforms the immigrant neighborhood into a commoditized tourist site. Laguerre's thesis is helpful in terms of