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

in such spaces, theoretically for the residents who currently live there. Hence, redevelopment is an economic development and planning tool used by government—now, usually, city government—to spur relatively quick social and economic change in a given area that is characterized as “blighted.”

Redevelopment, as a concept and practice, is surrounded by controversy and debate that stems from earlier efforts to change neighborhoods through large, federally funded urban renewal projects but that continues now with more locally funded, public-private projects (Anderson 1964; Gans 1968; Sagalyn 1995; Altshuler and Luberoff 2003). The debate and the controversies involved, however, really began before urban renewal, at least as early as the progressive era (1880s to 1920s), when social and physical planners began to focus their attention on immigrants' blighted neighborhoods and laid the foundations of U.S. city planning (Davis 1967; Hall 2005). Tracing the lineage of redevelopment efforts back to the progressive era reveals a broader definition of redevelopment that goes beyond its economic development purpose. Redevelopment becomes a tool of the state's institutional apparatus—a tool that the city business and political elite use to change the social structures in marginalized neighborhoods in order to reclaim those spaces for the benefit of the elite.

The tools of institutional intervention have varied depending on the sociopolitical context and the aims of the CBD elite. The institutional mechanisms used by city planners to revitalize low-income neighborhoods have included redevelopment, large urban renewal projects, inner-city economic development projects, and tenement housing programs, all of which have involved strong political and economic interests that shaped the programs' design and implementation. These political and economic interests stem from financial and political ties within the CBD elite trying to capitalize on regenerating attractive low-income areas in or near the CBD (Ward 1971; Gans 1982).

Historically, this capitalization of attractive marginal spaces has placed immigrant neighborhoods in a struggle for the maintenance and survival of their communities. Since the early twentieth century,