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Park needed the help of local government, and, in fact, important agents within local government also sought to maintain the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood. The case study of MacArthur Park shows that the processes of adaptation and co-evolution between the neighborhood's endogenous organizations and city institutions could proceed because three critical factors—immigrant capital, CBO grassroots networking power, and Latino citywide political power—converged to sustain the Mesoamerican immigrants' milieu. The book's contributions are important to the development of public policy as it relates to redevelopment and issues of neighborhood revitalization. In particular, the book addresses new contributions to emerging forms of local economic development in an increasingly globalized world. Redevelopment specialists need to consider new spatial relationships, such as the often strong transnational linkages found in immigrant communities. Redevelopment in low-income communities has to be addressed with attention to cultural continuity and the particular possibilities for adaptation that exist in these communities. Planners, in their training and practice, need to acquire and safeguard the ability to assess and build upon the strengths and resources of multicultural neighborhoods. Planning for multicultural constituencies needs to be taught in planning schools as the next generation of planning practitioners tries not to repeat the mistakes of past planners.
Chapter 1 will briefly introduce the problem outlined by the book and will stress the scholarly context and frame the research, highlighting the relevance and importance of the case history materials and providing an interpretive view to understand the neighborhood. The book's contribution to the field of city planning is addressed.
Chapter 2 traces the historical contestation between the immigrants' milieu and the gaze of redevelopment. A central theme within that history has been the constant effort to target and implement revitalization programs in immigrant neighborhoods. As the CBD elite seek to capitalize on regenerative low-income areas, this has historically placed low-income immigrant neighborhoods in an ever-shifting struggle for the maintenance and survival of their communities. Many immigrant ethnic neighborhoods, however, possess a rich mixture of social, financial,