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

in such immigrant neighborhoods and are fueled by a mixture of social, political, cultural, and economic capital brewing in these neighborhoods. Those various forms of capital help create what I have termed the immigrants' milieu. A milieu is a surrounding—an environment—especially of a social or cultural nature. Sir Peter Hall, in his book Cities in Civilization, described a “creative milieu”—a force that helps great civilizations establish golden ages of urban civilizations (Hall 1998). Manuel Castells applied this notion of a milieu in his theories on information technology, as the “milieu of innovation,” where spatial nodes of technological firms are clustered and lead to a mixture of ideas and products and to technological innovation (Castells and Hall 1994). The immigrants' milieu is a sociocultural environment—a “place” where immigrants create social, political, economic, and cultural forms of capital and, thus, develop dynamic, organic institutions that lead to a vibrant sense of urbanity by which these institutions reinforce each other, solidifying the immigrants' claim to that space.

Immigrants have established these milieux through their efforts to help themselves adapt to their host society, survive at the margins of their new country, and maintain some of their cultural traditions. They are able to create these milieux because of their social capital. Social capital, as defined by Pierre Bourdieu, is “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance or recognition” (Bourdieu 1986). Cultural capital consists of the networks of kinship and ethnic ties that help maintain social capital. Hence, cultural capital relates to accessing symbolic or material power through establishing ethnic identity (Castells 1997). Economic capital is conceptualized as the ability to gain financial resources available for investment (Hutchinson 2004). Furthermore, political capital can be conceptualized as influence gained in both the formal and informal political institutions shaping these marginal communities (Hutchinson 2004).

Immigrants use various strategies to build economic and social capital and adapt to their new host society in the United States. Historically, some immigrant groups have gravitated toward establishing small